The Cooler

The Conversations: 3D

2012-01-28T10:21:00.000-05:00

Is modern 3D technology the gateway to a new and improved kind of cinematic storytelling? Or is it an empty gimmick, a retread of an old fad, destined to disappear again as quickly as it arrived? Bottom line: Does 3D exist today because it provides an opportunity to enhance cinema or because it provides an opportunity to enhance the box office, or maybe both? These are the kinds of questions that Ed Howard and I approach in the latest edition of The Conversations at The House Next Door. We frame the conversation around the 3D of Martin Scorsese's Hugo, Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin, and, to a somewhat lesser degree, Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams. (Alas, we didn't include Wim Wenders' Pina, only because we wrapped the discussion before it was available.) This isn't the first time 3D has been debated like this, and it won't be the last. Whether Ed and I stumble onto any new ground or simply recap the many arguments that have been made elsewhere already, I'm not sure, but as we head into 2012 it seemed appropriate for a kind of "state of 3D" assessment of where things stand. Please add to the conversation by leaving comments at The House Next Door.

Click here for an archive of The Conversations.

Six Movie Geeks Sitting in a Tree, M-U-L-L-I-N-G

2012-01-19T20:11:00.007-05:00

The second edition of the SLIFR Movie Tree House has been called to order, and I'm very pleased to be in attendance. The rest of the club of course includes our charming host, Dennis Cozzalio of Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, and veterans Sheila O'Malley and Jim Emerson. New to these parts are Steven Boone and Simon Abrams.

If you followed along last year you know how this works: for a few days, the crew trades thoughts on the previous year in film (at least, that's the idea). Most of the initial entries are in, and I'll be providing links on this page (below the jump) as they're posted. Of course, nothing is stopping you from heading right over to Dennis' yard and following along.

Introductions and an Opening Salvo (Cozzalio)

Agony, Ecstasy and Thespian Pride (O'Malley)

Festival Favorites and Netflix Nuggets (Abrams)

Church of the Multiplex (Boone)

Pedigree 'Better Than' Hype? (Bellamy)

Discovery Through a Second Look (Emerson)

Bombast, Big Budgets, Breakfast Burritos (Cozzalio)

Rarefied Reaches (Boone)

Where's Martin Yan When You Really Need Him? (Abrams)

Revolution and Show Business (O'Malley)

The Movies Must Move Us (Bellamy)

Spirits and Influences (Emerson)

Academy Leaders (Cozzalio)

Malick's God, Cornish's Monsters (Boone)

Faith Lost and Found (Cozzalio)

Stories, Dreams, Memories (O'Malley)

This One Goes to Eleven (Bellamy)

Cigars for Everyone! (Abrams)

Loner Lover: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

2012-01-16T11:48:00.000-05:00

Nothing on the surface of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy would suggest that it’s a hard movie to keep up with. From a distance, Tomas Alfredson’s adaptation of John le Carre’s 1974 novel unfolds with the calm of an Englishman’s Sunday stroll, which of course is precisely the point. Le Carre wrote Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy, and the other books of its series, as an alternative to the action-packed James Bond adventures, and Alfredson is faithful to that intent. Guns are fired in Alfredson’s film, but there are no shootouts. Punches are thrown, but there are no fight scenes. Pursuit of the enemy is a constant, but there are no chase sequences. Somehow the movie is still outwardly slower than what I just described, and yet it challenges us to match its pace. Just beyond its calm demeanor and passive posture, Tinker Tailor is a maelstrom of information – clues dropped without fanfare, all of them exposing hidden truths that point to the identity of the mole and then to even deeper personal truths beyond that. Those who have read the novel or watched the 1979 miniseries starring Alec Guiness will have an easier time staying afloat. But the rest of us have no choice but to splash around in the torrent of first names, last names, codenames, nods, glances and insinuations while trying to keep our heads above water.

The first time I watched Tinker Tailor, I followed it well enough, but it took a second viewing to really feel it. There’s no shame in that, nor is there fault to be found in the film’s deliberate avoidance of boldface elucidation. Alfredson’s adaptation is a reflection of the film’s main character, George Smiley, the externally unhurried former agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service who goes searching for a mole inside the “Circus” as a storm of doubts, regrets and suspicions thunders inside him. At the same time, Tinker Tailor puts us in touch with Smiley’s experience, giving us a palpable sense of, and a great respect for, the tangled web of information that he must unravel to uncover the truth. Smiley is never spoon-fed, and thus we aren’t either, and no matter how many clues pass before us, Smiley is always one step ahead, deciphering the significance of the seemingly trivial. Thus, we often spot that Smiley has had an epiphany long before we have one of our own. The complexities of the plot are reason enough to see the movie (at least) twice, but there’s also this: Among other things, Tinker Tailor is actually about the act of reexamination, the discovery of new details through a second look at the familiar.

In what stands as my favorite male lead performance of 2011, Gary Oldman plays the man doing the looking. His portrayal of Smiley is an exemplar of acting best, not most, right down to Oldman’s avoidance of overacting his under-acting, as, say, Dustin Hoffman might have managed to do. Smiley’s taciturn temperament is his most defining characteristic, but it isn’t so prevalent that he becomes a caricature or otherwise one-dimensional. Smiley is subdued, yes, but not unexcitable. He’s introverted but not inscrutable. He’s stiff but not robotic. In scene after scene, Oldman makes every gesture count, from the look of sadness that slips across his face when he realizes that his dear departed friend, John Hurt’s Control, considered that he might be the mole, to the way he sizes up the flight pattern of a buzzing bee in order to let it out of a cramped car, to the way he wordlessly shakes a bottle of alcohol to playfully encourage a drink with a friend. Adorned in oversized glasses, as if to maximize his view of the entire chessboard, Smiley reminds neither of James Bond nor even Sherlock Holmes (not the classic version, the hyper-physical Robert Downey Jr. version or the hyper-cerebral Benedict Cumberbatch version). He’s a grandfatherly figure, albeit one without a family, and that seemingly innocuous contradiction points the way to the story’s darker secrets.

Tinker Tailor, like many of its characters, has two identities: it’s a labyrinthine whodunit, but it's also an examination of loneliness. The agents in the Circus are good at keeping secrets because they have few people in their lives to keep secrets from, and in some cases their personal lives are as covert as their careers. These men are born-loners who thus are well equipped to spend their lives figuratively and literally underground in the Circus, except that their solitude also makes them vulnerable: a loner’s weakness is a relationship, and in Tinker Tailor relationships – brotherly, platonic, romantic or otherwise – are hazards, not ports in the storm. Emotions cloud judgment. Love blinds. These themes are expressed through the story of Smiley, whose quiet house screams with the absence of his beloved wife, and the subplots of Ricki Tarr (Tom Hardy), who allows himself to believe in a happy ending he’s smart enough to know is impossible, and Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong), a former Circus agent turned teacher who befriends an overweight schoolboy who is plagued with self-doubt. “You’re good watcher though, eh?” Prideaux assures the boy. “Us loners always are.”

That’s about as on-the-nose as Tinker Tailor gets, and the beauty of Alfredson’s film, from a screenplay by Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan, is that the same revelations that point toward the identity of the mole also serve the character study unfolding just out of the spotlight. As in 2008’s Let the Right One In, Alfredson demonstrates a knack for creating rich atmosphere, from the tension of the cylindrical room in which the heads of the Circus hold their meetings to the festiveness of the Christmas party at which everyone joins in singing the Soviet national anthem (and other more significant events happen, too). With gorgeous cinematography from Hoyte Van Hoytema and a soothing yet anxious score by Alberto Iglesias, Tinker Tailor is engrossing even when it’s perplexing, and if that sounds like yet another contradiction, so be it; the movie is full of them. In one noteworthy scene, one of Smiley’s former colleagues flips through old photographs, nostalgically caressing the faces of her “lovely boys.” “That was a good time, George,” she says to Smiley, thinking back on their careers. “It was the war,” he corrects her. When emotions come into play, even the most obvious realities can be hard to see.

Bests of 2011

2012-01-01T14:02:00.041-05:00

Happy New Year! Based on what I’ve seen so far (and there are notable exclusions, like Carnage, Coriolanus, Margaret, Mysteries of Lisbon, A Separation, War Horse and I’m sure several others that I don’t even know I’m missing), here are my bests of the past year at the movies:

Best Utterance of a Monosyllabic Word, Human: Adam’s pre-surgery “Mom” in 50/50

Best Utterance of a Monosyllabic Word, Primate: Caesar’s “No” in Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Best Chase Sequence: The ride across the salt flats in Blackthorn

Best Epic Action Sequences: 13 Assassins

Best Unintentionally Hilarious Action Sequence: The brawl of the elderly in The Debt

Best Imitation of Classic Spielberg Action, Minus Narrative Momentum: The Adventures of Tintin

Best Close-ups: The Descendants

Best Use of 3D: Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Best Enhancement of a 2D Subject: The depiction of Pieter Bruegel’s The Way to Calvary in The Mill and the Cross

Best Diorama: George Melies’ toy shop in Hugo 3D

Best Unexpected Visual Effect: Jane’s rapidly unlacing corset in Jane Eyre

Best Visual Representation of a Life Cut Short: Egg shells and cookie dough in Into the Abyss

Best Use of Color: The dashes of red throughout We Need to Talk About Kevin

Best Approximation of the Production Design of a Brock Landers Movie: The Taggart Transcontinental offices in Atlas Shrugged: Part I

Best Depiction of a Historic Period: Meek’s Cutoff

Best Reenactment of a Historic Event: The multiple assassination plot that opens The Conspirator

Best Reimagining of a Historic Figure: Corey Stoll’s Ernest Hemingway in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris

Best Channeling of Early Pacino: Ryan Gosling’s wide-eyed simmering in The Ides of March

Best Documentary: Senna

Best Reason to Keep Believing in People: The Interrupters

Best Reason to Give Up on Movies: Immortals

Best Makeup: The dark contacts and Charles Foster Kane-esque girth of Leonardo DiCaprio’s J. Edgar Hoover in J. Edgar (I’m not kidding)

Best Nostalgia Act: The recreation of the opening credits number of The Muppet Show in The Muppets

Best Cinematic Allusions: Rango

Best Graceful Elucidation of Statistical Complexity: Moneyball

Best Graceless Elucidation of Statistical Complexity: Margin Call

Best Sign That Hollywood Doesn’t Trust Audiences to Comprehend Metaphors: The literal shit pie in The Help

Best So-Awful-It’s-Great Line of Dialogue in a Genuinely Awful Movie: “Lock him up in the elephant!” in Red Riding Hood

Best Prop: George Smiley’s glasses in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Best Use of Actors as Props: The A-list disease vessels in Contagion

Best Missing Prop: Dr. Rutledge's pipe that wasn't there, but might as well have been, in Source Code

Best Weapon: Driver’s hammer in Drive

Best Appendage: Michael Fassbender’s sledgehammer in Shame

Best Nudity: Ryan Gosling’s (obscured) full frontal in Crazy, Stupid, Love.

Best Sex Scene: Catfishlingus in Uncle Boonme Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Best Kiss: Driver and Irene in Drive

Best Portrayal of the Insecurity of Young Love: Jacob and Anna in Like Crazy

Best Portrayal of the Isolation of Hidden Love: Russell and Glen in Weekend

Best Portrayal of Committed Love: Tommy and Tess (and, for that matter, Tommy and Frank) in Warrior

Best Music: Drive

Best Musical Moment, Performance: The singing of the Soviet national anthem in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Best Musical Moments, Classical: “Lacrimosa” and the mysterious spire of creation and “Ma Vlast” and visions of childhood in The Tree of Life

Best Marriage of Musical and Emotional Crescendos: The fortification of Hogwarts to Alexandre Desplat’s “Statues” in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

Best Heartbreak: Certified Copy

Best Misery: Melancholia

Best Burden: We Need to Talk About Kevin

Best Paranoia: Take Shelter

Best Triumph: Warrior

Best Awe: The Tree of Life

Best Conclusion, Epic: A storm brews on the horizon in Take Shelter

Best Conclusion, Intimate: Lisbeth realizes she's alone in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Best Object of Affection: Melanie Laurent's Anna in Beginners

Best Jackass: Jon Hamm’s Ted in Bridesmaids

Best Dog: The terrier in The Artist

Best Bulldog: David Carr in Page One: Inside the New York Times

Best Beaver: The Beaver in The Beaver

Best Rabbit: Hanna's breakfast offering in Hanna

Best Literal Depiction of Childhood Trauma Starring Michael Fassbender: X-Men: First Class

Best Suggestion of Childhood Trauma Starring Michael Fassbender: Shame

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role: Nick Nolte in Warrior

Best Performance by an Actor in a Lead Role: Gary Oldman in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Best Actor: Michael Fassbender (X-Men: First Class, Jane Eyre, Shame, A Dangerous Method)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role: Elle Fanning in Super 8

Best Performance by an Actress in a Lead Role: Charlize Theron in Young Adult

Best Actress: Jessica Chastain (The Tree of Life, The Debt, The Help, Take Shelter)

Best Picture Without Flaws: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Best Picture With Glaring Flaws: The Tree of Life

What are some of your bests of 2011?

The Conversations: Alexander Payne

2011-12-31T14:06:00.001-05:00

I have a backlog of 2011 reviews in me that I'll need to attack in early 2012, but I'm pleased to close out the year with The Conversations: Alexander Payne, which is now live at The House Next Door. In this edition, Ed Howard and I discuss the writer/director's five feature films, from Citizen Ruth to The Descendants, and his short from Paris Je T'Aime. Along the way, we regularly engage with Payne's reputation for condescension, finding evidence that it fits and yet is often misapplied. Payne's films don't overwhelm me, but they offer much to discuss. If you're killing time before the ball drops tonight or find yourself recovering from a night of excitement tomorrow, please head over to The House Next Door and join the discussion.

Click here for an archive of The Conversations.

Shell Games and a Hangman's Noose: Thoughts on Homeland

2011-12-30T14:21:00.001-05:00

I have no doubt that Homeland is one of the most riveting new shows of 2011 - and while I don't watch enough TV to know for sure, maybe the "new" modifier isn't even necessary. The Showtime drama's strengths are many: Claire Danes' wide-eyed intensity and frail figure have proved perfect for the paranoid, reckless and ultimately self-destructive Carrie Mathison, the bipolar CIA agent trying to prevent a terrorist strike to preserve (and maybe prove) what remains of her sanity in the process; Mandy Patinkin is flawless as the mercurial Saul Berensen, Carrie's mentor, father figure and conscience; and Damian Lewis is a one-man-band of versatility as Sgt. Nicholas Brody, the central figure in the sometimes mysterious, sometimes suspenseful and often intense narrative, who is alternately charismatic, nurturing, pained, jaded, dark, warm, twitchy and/or violent, whatever the situation requires. The problem with Homeland, though, and the reason I can't see it as anything more than B-movie escapism with A-movie production values (and C-movie dialogue), is that it's too much like its main character, which is to say that, like Brody, Homeland is disingenuous and uncommitted, frequently doing things in the moment that are counter to its supposed ultimate aims.

(Major spoilers ahead, written under the assumption you've seen Homeland.)

The premise of Homeland is like that of a shell game. Brody's various personality profiles are laid out in front of us (the shells) with the implied promise that one of them conceals the truth (the pea), while the others are there to provide tantalizing misdirection. Our job is to watch intently and feel dazzled by the narrative sleight of hand. This is the essence of any good mystery - several plausible interpretations but only one reality - but Homeland doesn't play by its implied rules. Too fickle to commit to a single retroactively irrevocable truth, Homeland instead operates like a shell game with multiple peas (multiple truths), passing off its indecision as if it's complexity. This approach keeps us constantly guessing, and that's inherently stimulating, but artistically and architecturally it's fraudulent. While Homeland is asking us to decide if Brody is (a) a traumatized prisoner of war, incapable of dealing with the real world; (b) a confused but unthreatening guy looking to be a father to the two kids he's never known, a husband to the wife who hardly knows him or maybe a lover to the one person who understands him; or (c) a devout agent of terror, eager to sacrifice himself to avenge the slaughter of his surrogate family, the truth is that he's all of those things interchangeably and/or simultaneously, even though, one way or another, those personality profiles (and their inherent motivations) are mutually exclusive.

Here's what I mean: At the start of the season, Brody is depicted as a traumatized prisoner of war. This makes perfect sense. Based on what the show initially reveals through flashbacks, Brody has just returned from eight years of brutal imprisonment, time in which he was beaten, pissed on and made to kill his best friend with his bare hands (as far as he knew). Thus, Brody returns to the United States a broken man, which is why it's so appropriate that he spends his initial days alone in his bedroom staring at the wall, having awkward selfish sexual encounters with his wife and then shooting a deer with a handgun in front of a party of friends and family. All of this behavior aligns perfectly with that first (traumatized) personality type and, to some degree, even with the second, the confused unthreatening guy (although Brody's ability to become a swell dad to the kids he doesn't know almost over night does make his initial trauma seem hollow), but it's in absolute contrast to the third personality type, the devout agent of terror, a profile created by the revelation that Brody didn't spend eight years in a hole, as all of his initial actions and flashbacks indicated, but in fact was taken in by terror alpha dog Abu Nazir (Navid Marciano) and given religion, family, comfort and a sense of purpose.

If you arrange all of this information linearly, the show asks us to believe that Brody was tortured, became BFFs with his torturer, hatched a plan to return to the U.S. where he would appear like a victim of torture, then suddenly re-experienced the trauma of his torture like some delayed PTSD while still remaining loyal to his torturer (huh?) and then started to worry about who his wife had been fucking in his absence and how to be a better family man, even though he planned to sacrifice himself for his cause and didn't have any reason to worry about the future. Could these conflicting motivations live inside the same person? Of course, if Brody has some kind of multiple personality disorder or is otherwise "crazier" than bipolar Carrie, but that would prove the point: Brody isn't "complex," his hard-to-pin-down depiction is simply contradictory and uncommitted. (I think we can also rule out a Manchurian Candidate reading, as Brody's shifts in personality seem too frequent and random to be ascribed to some kind of triggered impulse.)

Thus, Homeland isn't a mystery to be solved. It's just a waiting game. Its truth is whatever the show needs it to be at that moment, to serve the scene, the mood and the ratings. It isn't unreasonable to think that Brody's character can evolve; that's fair. But what can't change, no matter how things are revealed to us, are his experiences in his eight years outside of the U.S. and, and a result of those, his initial intentions upon returning. Put another way, Brody didn't come to the U.S. ambiguous to himself. He came with a clear self-identity. If the show wants to imply that while pretending to be a family man he actually became one and then felt conflicted about his mission, I'm all for it. But to go that route, to really become a character study, Homeland would need to give up its shell game and start dealing in truths, and before it could do that it would need to pick one.

The season finale suggests the show might be willing to go that direction or that it might continue to sell out to unpredictability. A microcosm of Homeland's strengths and weaknesses over its first episodes, the finale beautifully weaves Carrie's heartbreaking ruination with intense ticking-time-bomb suspense while also unforgivably ignoring the character impulses it so clearly establishes. Over the course of the final episode, Brody repeatedly proves his allegiance to Nazir's mission: recording a "Dear John" type video for his family; attempting heartfelt if awkward goodbyes with his wife and son; avoiding his daughter's nosiness to strap on a bomb vest and then avoiding his daughter's hug so she doesn't detect the vest underneath his shirt; getting past metal detectors and into the bunker with the vice president and other assorted targets; flipping the detonation switch(!!!); stripping off his clothes and repairing the malfunctioning vest(!!!); and then moving into position again, his thumb hovered over the switch, ready to kill, as if there was any doubt. But then, just like that, all of that momentum is discarded when Brody gets a tap on the shoulder from a secret service agent and (1) amazingly doesn't interpret this action as someone trying to thwart his mission and (2) even more amazingly thwarts his own mission voluntarily ... to take a phone call. It's the equivalent of the 9/11 hijackers making a flyby of the World Trade Center because, just before impact, one of the passengers rings their flight attendant call button.

Understand, the problem with this scenario isn't a matter of actual, external realism (although, yeah, we could go there, from Nazir's curiously convoluted multi-assassination plot to the fact that the secret service agent was taking calls in the bunker in the first place and thought that Brody's daughter might have an emergency remotely worth considering only a few minutes after the vice president was shot at and splattered by blood), the problem is that the show violates its own internal depiction of "reality," by acting as if Brody was only kinda-sorta committed to his mission despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. (Even worse, in the aftermath of the aborted mission, the show has the balls to reassert Brody's allegiance to Nazir through the murder of Tom Walker.) In short, Homeland shows us that nothing means anything, because at a moment's notice it can be discarded in favor of something new.

In the comments section of Alan Sepinwall's recap, reactions to the finale are a mixture of disgust and praise. The disgust seems tied to a feeling of being cheated, not quite for the reasons described above, so much as a sense that the show spent all season running toward a cliff promising to jump off before turning back at the last moment. The praise is for the series' strengths, which are many (the bunker scene is undeniably intense, until it's laughable, and Carrie's suffering, punctuated by her too late epiphany, is tragic), aided by acceptance that it was "unlikely" and "unrealistic" that a big-time drama like Homeland would kill off one of its main characters. Both reactions are fair, but the trouble with so easily forgiving the messiness of Homeland's conclusion is that it suggests the series' creators and writers were backed into a corner by Brody and not the other way around. If Homeland put itself in a place where the only way out was a wild deus ex machina, the creators/writers have only themselves to blame. With the finale, Homeland became akin to an executioner who after 12 weeks of crafting the perfect noose demonstrates its perfection by hanging himself.

Never mind that Homeland could have sidestepped its foolish fate by blaming Brody's malfunctioning bomb vest, which would have maintained the purity of Brody's intentions, proven the stupidity of Nazir's overcomplicated plot and perhaps created an interesting level of distrust between Nazir and Brody heading into the second season. The crime isn't how Homeland sacrifices its own character development in the name of wild plot twists - the hallmark of shallow entertainment - but that it does. By the end of the first season it's clear, Homeland isn't what it pretends to be.

Best Movie Posters of 2011

2011-12-23T10:20:00.000-05:00

Tis the holiday season, which means it's the time of year when I get super excited about the idea of catching up on movie writing, only to realize that family time is precious and demanding (in a good way!) and that the best I can hope for is to kinda-sorta keep up with movie watching. So while I do hope to get some actual writings posted between now and 2012, I figure this is as good a time as any to make my annual recognition of my favorite movie posters.

What do I look for in a movie poster? In general, I like a striking image that stands out in the lineup at the multiplex while evoking the film's themes. The best movie posters ingrain themselves within our memories of the films themselves, so that to think of Jaws, for example, is to think of that image of the giant shark swimming upward toward the helpless swimmer. Of course, that means that sometimes how we feel about a movie poster is directly tied to how we feel about a film, and an image that might otherwise be pedestrian takes on greater meaning retroactively or a compelling image is made to feel trite because the movie turns out to be. The collection below represent some of my favorite films of the year, and some I didn't care for and a few I didn't even see.

So, tell me, what are your favorite posters of the year? And what did I get horribly wrong?

Shooting at the Walls of Heartache: Warrior

2011-12-04T14:38:00.000-05:00

When the one-word title appeared on the screen in white block text against a black backdrop, I presumed that was the first of what would be many nods to Rocky in Warrior. I was sort of right. Like Sylvester Stallone’s 1976 franchise-starter, this mixed martial arts drama is about underdogs, second chances and believing in yourself when almost no one else will. On top of that, Warrior contains overt references to Rocky buddies Mick and Paulie, and it has a seemingly unstoppable Russian villain who reminds of Rocky IV’s Ivan Drago. And yet the longer Warrior went on, the less it reminded me of Rocky, or any of the countless fight movies it inspired, and the more it seemed akin to, of all things, Michael Mann’s Heat. Like that 1995 crime classic, Warrior is a drama about emotionally embattled men who tempt danger in an effort to exercise control over their lives. It’s a film that’s simultaneously mythic and realistic, stylized and uncomplicated, violent and romantic, epic and intimate. And it’s gripping to the end – without question one of the best films I’ve seen all year.

None of this is to imply that director Gavin O’Connor is the next Mann or that Joel Edgerton and Tom Hardy are the next Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, although their lead performances are tremendous and the nighttime meeting between Warrior’s adversarial yet cut-from-the-same-cloth main characters works as this movie’s version of Heat’s famous diner scene. Rather, I hope to call attention to the way that O’Connor, like Mann, uses thunderous action sequences to intensify his human story, instead of letting the physical action become the story. From a screenplay written by O’Connor, Cliff Dorfman and Anthony Tambakis, Warrior’s basic plot will be familiar to anyone who has seen a sports movie – the protagonists enter a big tournament as long-shots and unknowns, hoping to fight their way to the top – but what’s special about Warrior is that it doesn’t ask us to root for victory itself so much as triumph. O’Connor accomplishes this in large part by giving us two protagonists, who happen to be brothers, with equally worthy aims: Brendan (Edgerton) is a suspended high school teacher and father of two who needs to win the $5 million purse to keep from the family home from going into foreclosure; Tommy (Hardy) is a traumatized war veteran and former caretaker of a dying mother who wants to financially support the widow of his best friend and who needs to lash out against a world that keeps trying to break his spirit. Because it’s impossible for both men to emerge as tournament winners, O’Connor ensures that the film is focused on his fighters’ souls, not their scorecards.

That Warrior’s narrative is generally predictable is, well, predictable. Protagonists in sports movies don’t always win the trophy, but they almost always get close. That’s why within the first 15 minutes, as soon as the big mixed martial arts (MMA) tournament is name-dropped, we know with almost complete certainty that Brendan and Tommy will be the last two men standing. And to O’Connor’s credit, Warrior never pretends otherwise. Brendan and Tommy aren’t on the original list of competitors at Sparta, but the film doesn’t insult the intelligence of its audience by implying suspense where there is none. Along those lines, Warrior’s requisite training montage, which plays out in split screen with Beethoven in the background, is less of an “Eye of the Tiger” adrenaline booster than a Raiders of the Lost Ark spots-on-a-map record of forward progress, a forthright acknowledgment that these guys are going to be ready. And even though the tournament takes up most of the film’s final hour, its preliminary bouts are models of big-picture awareness: just long enough to be dramatically substantial, yet short enough that the inevitable clash between Brendan and Tommy always seems just around the corner. Mystery, suspense and ambiguity all have their place, but Warrior is one of those films that reaches greatness by giving us the expected and familiar with a depth of conviction and strength of tone that make it feel alive and new – straight out of the Mann playbook.

Don't misunderstand: Warrior isn’t void of surprises. Its characters may be rooted in archetypes, but they aren’t bound to them, which is why Warrior deftly avoids cliché at least as often as it succumbs to it. Case in point: consider the marriage of Brendan and Tess (a terrific Jennifer Morrison), which is one of the most refreshing portrayals of partnership I’ve seen at the movies in years. Here is a couple that fights without screaming and can be at odds and in-love simultaneously. In almost every other Hollywood movie, when Brendan tells Tess that he’s going to fight in Sparta against her wishes, Tess threatens to take the kids and leave him. But in Warrior, Tess looks at her husband with disappointment yet understanding and simply says she can’t watch him fight. It’s a perfect portrayal of mixed emotions, and so is the scene in which Brendan’s father, a recovering alcoholic played by Nick Nolte in what might be the finest performance of his career, arrives at Brendan’s house without warning or invitation and tells Brendan that his estranged brother is back in town. Brendan is stern with his father, even mean, never wavering on the idea that he doesn’t want his kids anywhere near their formerly abusive grandfather. But Brendan is human, too, still a son who doesn’t want his dad to suffer and a brother who is naturally curious about Tommy, and thus through the stops and starts of their awkward conversation we get a clear sense of the family’s tumultuous past and the lingering heartache.

Who would have thought that a film about MMA, a sport in which two opponents look to pummel one another into concussion or submission, would offer some of the most nuanced characterizations of the year? I haven’t even mentioned the relationship between Brendan and his coach, Frank (Frank Grillo), which is one of the rare male friendships at the movies that conveys love through eye contact, smiles and naked caring, rather than through sarcastic remarks, insults and horseplay. Nor have I mentioned Tommy, the broken ex-Marine with the Rocky-esque accent and the bulging trapezius muscles that sit atop his shoulders like missile launchers, who looks like a stubborn meathead and often acts like one, but who beams with delight when he talks to his best-friend’s widow and treats his waitress politely even when he’s irritated with his father. And Nolte’s Paddy? In his haunted expressions of regret, he acknowledges every charge of past monstrousness that his sons lay at his feet. And in his hopeful attempts to bond with his sons, he proves he’s what he says he is: a guy trying to turn his life around. Warrior never absolves its characters of their faults and sins, but it never reduces its characters to their imperfections either.

Of course, in emulation of Warrior’s nuance and complexity, it’s only right that I acknowledge its faults. Most significantly, Tommy’s war subplot is messily stitched in; and O’Connor, playing the MMA tournament organizer, proves to have M. Night Tarantino Disease and gives himself too much screen time; and the MMA commentators spell out the stakes when it isn’t necessary; and in one particularly awkward moment the play-by-play guy says that the crowd is stunned, but O’Connor doesn’t give us a shot that supports it. The movie isn’t perfect. But these missteps are overshadowed by Warrior’s thick atmosphere of piercing emotion, which is created through its consistently heartfelt and routinely underplayed performances – the antithesis of last year’s The Fighter – and O'Connor's intimate compositions. I’m sure that MMA fans can nitpick the realism of its physical action, but the drama is wholly convincing. In fight terms, Warrior leaves it all in the ring. That's all we can ask for.

It’s Got Vision: Blackthorn

2011-11-28T18:37:00.000-05:00

Among the many hilarious moments in 1969’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, one of my favorites comes just after the infamous outlaws have fled the United States. Arriving in a train station that is nothing more than a gutted building with pigs hanging around out back, the duo has successfully landed in Bolivia, a mysterious country to the south that Butch has romanticized as some exotic retirement paradise for on-the-lam stick-up artists without ever seeing it. Needless to say, the first impression leaves something to be desired, but Butch remains optimistic. “All of Bolivia can’t look like this,” he reasons. Yet Sundance isn’t so sure: “How do you know? This might be the garden spot of the whole country.” Mateo Gil’s Blackthorn clarifies that it isn’t. Set in 1927, almost 20 years after Butch and Sundance were reported dead in the kind of massive shootout that was so memorably depicted in George Roy Hill’s Western bromance, Blackthorn finds Butch very much alive, comfortably holed up in a small cabin tucked into the fold of a verdant mountain range – still in Bolivia but far from view. Indeed, this must be the garden spot, but it isn’t the limit of the country’s rugged beauty. Not even close.

Blackthorn has some of the most vivid natural imagery I’ve ever seen at the movies, in the company of Tarsem’s The Fall, and the Bolivian landscape is cinematographer Juan Ruiz Anchia’s most alluring subject. The movie takes us from Butch’s lush hideaway in the mountains, where he lives under the alias James Blackthorn, raising horses and romancing one of the locals, to a valley of snow-white salt flats that seem to stretch into infinity, spelling doom for anyone who dares to cross them, and to several places in between. Each location is as stunning as the last, and the cinematography – by which I mean the visual storytelling, if that word needs more definition – is just as strong. Some shots are Western staples enhanced to their fullest, like the tracking shot trailing Butch and his horses through the dust kicked up by galloping hooves, the ground a golden brown, the sky a pristine blue. Some shots perfectly articulate the spirit of the traditional Western loner, like the image of Butch walking up a set of train tracks in the middle of nowhere, heading toward a water tower under which he can take relief from the blistering sun. Some shots mimic the sweaty, grungy close-ups of Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns. Some shots remind of David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, in particular a twilit image of two men on horseback far in the distance trying to survive the salt flats, much like Lawrence trying to survive Nefud on camelback. And, yes, some shots allude to Hill’s Butch and Sundance movie, like the multiple shots of a threatening posse in the distance, constantly advancing, never seeming to tire.

Gil’s film, from a screenplay by Miguel Barros, is well aware of the strong impression left by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and it embraces its spot in that classic’s shadow. Sam Shepard’s Butch isn’t a strict extension of Paul Newman’s portrayal, but it isn’t a complete reimagining either. When Butch spots a wealthy man’s pocket watch and can’t resist luring him into a card game to win it, it plays like a meta reference to The Sting. Shepard makes Butch his own – he doesn’t walk around with the cocky swagger of Newman’s portrayal – but it’s the kind of performance you could easily imagine Newman stepping into in his later years. The strongest references to Hill’s film come in flashbacks to a younger Butch and Sundance, played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Padraic Delaney, respectively, in which the outlaws repeatedly trade verbal jabs while treating their life on the run with familiar irreverence, as if these men could be no other way. These flashbacks aren’t particularly necessary to Blackthorn, but they’re welcome just the same because they’re so wonderfully shot, particularly a lighthearted scene in which Butch is hung up in a wire fence near a wheat field and a sweet farewell between Butch and Etta Place (Dominique McElligott) at a Bolivian train station far more attractive than the one where the gang arrives in Hill’s film.

Even with all its allusions (intentional or not), Blackthorn becomes its own in the sequence on the salt flats, in which the editing is as crisp as the images and the pacing is quick yet assured. I’ve made it this far without explaining the plot because it’s incidental to the film’s pleasures, and Gil errs only when he fails to remember that. The final act is especially plot heavy, with Stephen Rea, as a former Pinkerton bounty hunter, providing all the background and forecasting the future like the villain in a bad comic book movie. Underneath its unnecessarily intricate plot, Blackthorn is your typical Western about a man who can’t outrun his past, and that’s plenty. Bolivia, as it turns out, is as wonderful as Butch dreamed, but retirement becomes lonely when you outlive all of your friends, and while Gil and Anchia are depicting Bolivia’s natural beauty they’re underlining Butch’s isolation. Whereas Hill’s film, written by William Goldman, is an assault of witty banter and cutting remarks (“Morons! I’ve got morons on my team!”), Blackthorn lacks a single noteworthy line. But its images linger in the mind like a catchphrase.

I Hope That Something Better Comes Along: The Muppets

2011-11-27T10:37:00.000-05:00

Jason Segel's The Muppets has tremendous reverence for the Jim Henson era, and it unfolds with great joy. But all too often, the Muppets are either left out of the spotlight or confined to retro appeal. As a follow-up to my video essay, "Searching for the Muppets," my review of The Muppets is available at Press Play.

Please leave any comments at Press Play.

Infinite Sadness: Melancholia

2011-11-24T12:01:00.000-05:00

The opening shot of Melancholia is a microcosm of what’s to come – a juxtaposition of beauty and suffering. It begins as nothing more than a tight close-up of Kirsten Dunst’s striking face, locked in an expression of wet, worn-out misery, her hair fluttering slightly in a state of not-quite-suspended animation. Then come the birds. Dead birds, falling from the sky beyond Dunst’s shoulder. From there, this eight-and-a-half-minute prologue expands to include images of the surreal (Dunst in a wedding dress, walking through the woods with vines clinging to her legs), the disastrous (Charlotte Gainsbourg holding a child, running in fear from a mysterious unrelenting cataclysm, her feet sinking into the ground with each step) and the astronomical (a huge blue planet slowly approaching Earth, dwarfing it until it subsumes it). A few of the latter shots can’t help but spark memories of the long creation sequence from this summer’s The Tree of Life, but whereas Terrence Malick’s film goes to space to marvel at the awesomeness of creation, Lars von Trier goes there to suggest the massiveness of doom and despair.

Melancholia is about severe depression. The main character, no doubt a stand-in for the director, is Dunst’s Justine. After the prologue, the film finds Justine on her wedding day, playfully laughing at the difficulty that her limousine driver is having trying to navigate the winding roadway up to the castle-like mansion where the reception is being held. The bride and groom are late, but they don’t seem to care. In the back of the limo, they giggle and kiss. And when they arrive for the reception and get lectured by the hosts and proprietors, who happen to be her sister Claire (Gainsbourg) and brother-in-law John (Kiefer Sutherland), it doesn’t faze them. They’re in love, and it’s their day, and nothing else matters. Or so it seems. A few drinks and awkward toasts later, the bubbly bride is gone, replaced by a woman incapable of propriety for propriety’s sake. She’s cranky, tired, disinterested and very, very distant. In love? Justine hardly seems aware of her husband. Heck, she hardly seems to be aware of anything, except maybe the void she feels between herself and her inattentive father or the bite of her mother’s acute perception of her. It’s her wedding day, and Justine knows how she’s supposed to feel, and what everyone expects her to feel, but she just doesn’t feel that way, no matter how hard she tries. That’s depression.

This first half of Melancholia is penetrating in its depiction of this awful condition, not just in how it affects Justine, who flees her own reception to climb into bed and then soak in a tub, but even more so in its depiction of how others respond to it. At the reception there are those who are oblivious to Justine’s suffering (Stellan Skarsgard as Justine’s ever profit-minded boss) and those who shun her for it (Udo Kier’s judgmental wedding planner), those who condemn Justine to eternal suffering (Charlotte Rampling as Justine’s mother) and those who foolishly believe that joyous events can cure her condition (Alexander Skarsgard as Justine’s husband), those who seem to care too little (John Hurt as Justine’s father) and those who seem to care too much (Gainbourg’s Claire). Justine tries desperately to rally – “I smile and I smile and I smile…” – but there’s no outrunning her sense of doom. In one gorgeous and poignant sequence, Justine watches through a telescope as small hot-air balloons adorned with well wishes from the wedding party rise up toward the heavens, glowing like lanterns in the sky. As Justine steps away from the telescope, she closes her eyes, and an expression close to mild nausea flashes across her face. Then von Trier cuts to a sequence of images that Justine would need the Hubble telescope to see – images of deep space, images that show just how far Justine wants to be from where she is.

In the second half of the film, deep space comes closer to earth. Melancholia now isn’t a condition of severe depression, it’s a planet, a looming apocalypse, which of course symbolizes severe depression. Where the first half of the film has a predominately gold/brown palette, this second half is mostly blue/gray, and it manages to be even drearier. Although the stakes are technically higher in this second half, the emotional intensity somehow slackens. I’m not quite sure why. Perhaps I simply don’t find Claire’s suffering as devastating as Justine’s. Perhaps von Trier can’t sustain the misery for two hours. Perhaps the stunning prologue, which eliminates any mystery about the outcome, works against the potential power of the conclusion. Mostly, though, I find Justine’s actions in the finale to be out of character. I’ve read numerous reviews suggesting that Justine’s suffering somehow equips her to console her sister and nephew at the end of days, but in my mind that reading betrays what the rest of the film make so clear: that severe depression has no link to the real world, no rationale. Feeling like the world is going to end and knowing it actually will are two entirely different things. And if all this time Justine’s misery has been related to a very real premonition of an actual cataclysm, it cheapens the metaphor.

But maybe I’m over thinking it. After all, this is from Lars von Trier, a filmmaker who is more provocateur than philosopher. Despite its subject matter, Melancholia isn’t nearly as suffocatingly unpleasant as most of the director’s films, but it does include his familiarly perverse view of women as monsters who need to be pleasured and punished via their genitals, often simultaneously. As Justine, Dunst is all-in – female actors really have no other choice when working with von Trier – and her performance is a shining example of measured, confident acting that trusts the camera, editing and score to evoke the twisted emotions beyond her pained smiles and grim gazes. There’s so much richness to find in Dunst’s face that it’s a shame von Trier needs to ogle her breasts in a moonlit nude scene that’s pure teenage fantasy, but as Justine says to her husband, “What did you expect?” Von Trier’s bleak worldview and twisted eroticism hover the film like Melancholia, like Justine’s depression, capturing our attention until they subsume us.

Searching for the Muppets

2011-11-22T17:14:00.001-05:00

As premiered yesterday over at Press Play, I'm pleased to present my second video essay, "Searching for the Muppets." As you can see above, it's available in two parts. The total running time will require about 20 minutes of your life, but it's packed with Muppet clips, so you can thank Jim Henson for keeping it interesting.

"Searching for the Muppets" is my attempt to cut to the core of the Muppets' signature spirit, as defined by The Muppet Show. Part I examines the characters that characterized the brand. Part II explores why many of the post-Henson projects failed to capture the Muppets' original spirit.

Please watch. If you're willing to promote this video or wish to leave comments, please direct traffic to and/or leave feedback at Press Play.

Real Human Beings: Into the Abyss

2011-11-20T20:51:00.002-05:00

One of the reasons I’m fond of the documentary format is because, having written my share of news stories and features, I can relate to it. I have no concept of what it would be like to hold the tips of my thumbs and index fingers together and gaze through a rectangle made out of my hands while determining how to block an epic fight sequence, but I do know what it’s like to pore over vast amounts of data and try to bring the key points to the surface, and what it’s like to try to arrange that data in a way that’s compelling and propulsive, and what it’s like to interview people and try to get them to open up and articulate their feelings in an interesting way. The latter task can be especially challenging, but the great ones make it look easy. Werner Herzog is one of the great ones. People open up to him. They might not speak the truth exactly, but they reveal themselves honestly. As a documentary filmmaker, that’s Herzog’s gift. Unfortunately, sometimes honesty isn’t enough for Herzog. That’s his biggest weakness.

Herzog’s indulgences with truth are fairly well known among cinephiles, even if they’re often hidden within his films and infrequently dissected outside of them. Critics tend to assist Herzog in covering up his manipulations, even after he cops to them, by romanticizing his quest for “ecstatic truth,” which when you get down to it is Herzog’s term for “stuff that isn’t actually the truth but makes for a better story,” which when you get down to it is the kind of stuff that can get a newspaper journalist fired. A particularly egregious example would be in Little Dieter Needs to Fly, the 1997 documentary about a soldier who was held in a Vietnamese prison camp until he escaped, who is shown repeatedly opening and closing his front door to ensure it’s unlocked, which Herzog positions as evidence of the man’s imprisonment trauma when in reality it’s an “ecstatic” fabrication. If Into the Abyss, Herzog’s latest film, contains such deceits, I couldn’t spot them, but there are a handful of times when Herzog is guilty of leading the witness, putting words into the mouths of his subjects in an effort to make their stories more dramatic or poignant than they would be otherwise. The difference this time is that Herzog’s manipulations are blatant: we can hear Herzog guiding his subjects, articulating the memories he wishes they’d share. Into the Abyss isn’t among Herzog’s greatest documentaries, but in this respect and others it’s one of his most transparent.

That openness begins from the outset. Into the Abyss is a wandering exploration of capital punishment itself, as examined through a specific 2001 triple homicide in Texas carried out by two then-teenagers, one of whom landed on death row. His name is Michael Perry, and he’s one of the film’s first talking heads, interviewed by an unseen Herzog while sitting on the other side of shatterproof glass, only eight days away from his execution. Herzog asks Perry about what it feels like to know his death is coming, and he probes Perry with enough general questions about the murders to give him a chance to insist his innocence and, in doing so, reveal his dubiousness. Then Herzog tells Perry that he doesn’t believe in capital punishment, and that while he might not like Perry, he respects him as a human being and wishes him well. If that sounds somewhat contradictory, it’s only because it’s sincere. From that early exchange, Herzog’s position is clear: he doesn’t think the government should perform executions, even if the subject is more monster than man.

The rest of the film unspools from that recognizably antithetical position (one that, full disclosure, I find very relatable). Herzog attacks the details of the awful crimes: We learn that Perry and his accomplice, Jason Burkett, committed the murders because they wanted to steal a Comero. We see crime scene footage in which egg shells in a bowl and balls of cookie dough on a baking sheet remind of the life in progress that the young men stopped short. We see interviews with relatives of the victims, who because of the nature of the crimes became victims of a different kind – traumatized, heartbroken, empty. We even see the elbow of a corpse, submerged in a small lake. Herzog attacks the toll of capital punishment with equal honesty, most notably through the tearful comments of a death row priest, who has comforted countless lethal injectees in their final moments, and the dark memories of a former captain of a tie-down team, who assisted in more than 125 executions until he felt his own existence slipping away. Between these two extremes there’s an interview with the woman who met Burkett after he was sentenced to 40 years in prison and married him, and (mysteriously) became impregnated by him, and has clearly found something to love in this man, even if she’s incapable of accepting who he was.

The sum effect of these inspections is unspecific, which is to say that Herzog doesn’t lead us to a neat and tidy conclusion. People for and against the death penalty could watch this film and feel that it vindicates their position. The director himself is clearly against capital punishment, but even though Herzog gets the sister of two of the victims to agree that Jesus wouldn’t approve of the death penalty, when she asserts that “Some people just don’t deserve to live,” Herzog has no comeback, and it’s unlikely he’d wish away the sense of peace the woman says she received from Perry’s execution. This isn’t a film about right and wrong, you see. It’s about wrong and wrong. It’s about guilty men who refuse to take accountability for their actions and about the innocent people who can never break free of the consequences of the crimes. The emotions involved in murder, imprisonment and capital punishment are complex, and Herzog never once suggests otherwise. He openly wonders why God allows capital punishment, but he seems not at all surprised that humans do.

Almost all of the interviews in this film have a degree of peculiarity that I suspect extends beyond even Herzog’s imagination. There’s the priest who tears up while talking about squirrels, the two killers who continue to insist on their innocence despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the wife who rolls her eyes at death row groupies without realizing she is one and the guy who was stabbed by a screwdriver and went to work 30 minutes later. And then there’s Delbert Burkett, Jason’s father. In prison on drug charges, he’s the most fascinating character in the film, even though he had nothing to do with his son’s crimes. Or did he? Delbert tells Herzog that if he’d been present in Jason’s life, been a father to his son, he thinks the murders wouldn’t have happened. He may be right. Based on Delbert’s interview, it appears the only father-son bonding that he and Jason ever experienced is when they were handcuffed to one another while being transferred to another prison. It doesn’t get any lower than that, Delbert admits, and for his crimes as an absent father he wishes he could take on his son’s sentence. As he describes this, Delbert unintentionally shows the cost of mere imprisonment when he suggests that his son won’t be released until 1941. “You’re in the wrong decade,” Herzog corrects him. As punishments go, that’s probably severe enough. Except when it isn’t.

Solid Weight: J. Edgar

2011-11-13T22:30:00.000-05:00

There was a time in this country – and, sadly, some people are still living in it – when homosexuality was considered a character flaw. Thankfully society is more enlightened now, but that enlightenment does no favors for Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar. Based on a screenplay by Dustin Lance Black, Eastwood’s film looks at and beyond the professional career of the longtime FBI director to find a man hiding his extra-professional feelings for his right-hand man, Clyde Tolson, not just from the outside world but, in large part, from Tolson and even himself. It’s impossible not to feel sympathy for someone forced to suffer such a repressed emotional existence, especially when his mother tells him – with unblinking awareness – that she’d rather have a dead son than a gay one. And therein lies the problem. One of America’s most notorious figures – a man who enforced the law according to his own prejudices and by circumventing the law whenever it suited him – J. Edgar Hoover is a man many believe deserves no sympathy.

That’s understandable. But then so is Eastwood’s desire to investigate and articulate the man beyond the legend. Alas, as much as we profess to yearn for complex characters on the big screen, whenever a movie gets made about a controversial subject it reveals our fondness for the unambiguousness of black and white. Whether the subject is Hitler or Hoover, when a certain amount of recent historical evil is involved, we tend to get uncomfortable with nuance. Of course, if we’re honest about it, the nuance remains. To absolve or justify the extreme sins of such characters would be reprehensible, but to pretend such complexities don’t exist, simply because they don’t fit the familiar historical caricature, is to avoid facing the truth. So even if someone such as Hoover or Hitler – or Che or Cheney, or Jerry Sandusky – doesn’t deserve to be humanized, what the audience deserves is to be treated like discerning adults who, at our most complex, can respect the intricacies of a monster without losing sight of their monstrousness.

Eastwood’s film can be criticized for not portraying Hoover’s villainy to its fullest (an impossibility, but never mind) and for allowing the examination of Hoover’s relationship with Tolson, a substantial portion of the film, to become a sloppy melodrama. But this isn’t a whitewash. Not even close. In scene after scene, we see not only that Hoover was a conniving, blackmailing, power-hungry, son-of-a-bitch who obeyed no one other than his mother (not even presidents) and lashed out at anyone in close proximity when he didn’t get his way, we see also that he was all these things for decades. J. Edgar might lack depth of examination but certainly not breadth. Half of the film unfolds in the months before Hoover’s death, as he dictates his memoirs to a series of handsome male aides who are dismissed the moment they fail to meet Hoover’s unreasonable standards, and the rest unfolds in flashbacks chronicling Hoover’s ascension and reign. The passage of time is portrayed most obviously through the application of heavy makeup on the film’s three main characters (more on this in a bit) and through references to historical events (the Lindberg kidnapping and gangster wars of the ‘30s, the John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King espionage of the ‘60s, etc.), but it’s conveyed most ingeniously in the recurring scene in which Hoover waits calmly outside the Oval Office to meet the new president – he worked with eight of them, six as director – a manila folder on his lap containing enough blackmail material to make it clear that he was the tail that wagged the dog.

Eastwood suggests the massiveness of Hoover’s villainy in much the same way. In one of the film’s best scenes, a younger Hoover gives instructions to a select number of agents who will be charged with mining the private lives of whomever gets under Hoover’s skin. As Hoover describes this new operation, an empty filing cabinet, which will hold whatever dirty little secrets the agents find, is rolled into place. And then another filing cabinet is rolled in. And then another. And another. Although far from a complete summary of Hoover’s nefariousness, it’s a succinct and powerful indication of his intent and ambition. And as the rest of the film makes clear, with Hoover intent and outcome were never far apart. Can’t supply arms to his agents? Hoover gives them away as gifts. Not involved in the arrest of America’s most wanted criminal? Nothing a photo-op can’t fix. Lose a bet at the races? The track covers the loss. Hoover almost always got his way, and that, as much as anything, is what makes his relationship with Tolson worth observing. Because even though J. Edgar suggests that Hoover and Tolson shared a great deal of trust, affection and understanding, there remained between them an abyss – physical and emotional – that Hoover was never able to cross.

Playing Hoover throughout the film is Leonardo DiCaprio in one of the least flashy but most impressive performances of his career. Young or old, his Hoover is imposing and forceful. DiCaprio has always brought great intensity to his roles, but even as he creeps toward 40 he’s had trouble overcoming the youthful squeak of his voice and his boyish good looks. Not here. A few times in the film Hoover is told that his expanding midsection is “solid weight,” and that’s precisely what DiCaprio’s performance has. He spends all of the film flashing shifty brown eyes that suggest an empty soul and at least half of the film under heavy makeup; he wears both well. The makeup used for the elder Hoover is some of the most lived-in and evocatively convincing since Orson Welles played Charles Foster Kane (similarities of the cinematic narratives don’t hurt the comparison). The makeup used to age Hoover’s longtime secretary Helen Gandy (a wasted Naomi Watts) and Tolson, however? Not so much. The elder Tolson is maybe the least convincing makeup job I can remember since Biff waxed George McFly’s car at the end of Back to the Future, and Armie Hammer doesn’t help matters by failing to hide his youthful coordination. After Tolson suffers a stroke toward the end of the film, Hammer plays him with the extreme facial ticks of someone who has just inhaled a handful of pepper and is trying not to sneeze.

Such miscues distract from the film’s otherwise engaging tone, and J. Edgar can’t avoid several of the traditional biopic pitfalls, such as vast oversimplification (suggesting Hoover conceived and set up the entire card catalog system at the Library of Congress) and an unwillingness to let go (do we really need to watch these characters die to keep from thinking they’re still alive?). But even with its faults this is the most watchable and rewarding Eastwood film since 2006’s Letters from Iwo Jima (admittedly, the bar is low). And as painfully melodramatic as the film’s conclusion is, what with Eastwood’s familiar feather-light piano heavy-handedly applying the mood, it’s also telling. (Spoilers ahead) As Tolson wanders into Hoover’s bedroom in search of his deceased beloved, he gazes around the overly adorned space like someone getting his first peek at Xanadu, and it becomes clear that even Tolson never made it to Hoover’s inner sanctum. Tolson finds Hoover on the floor, shirtless, overweight and very much alone. It’s an ordinary death for an extraordinary man. Notice I didn’t say great.

Voices Down the Corridor: Martha Marcy May Marlene

2011-11-11T08:39:00.000-05:00

The cult at the center of Martha Marcy May Marlene is everything that Hollywood wants cults to be: menacing, violent, indiscriminately sexual, grungy yet photogenic and not shy about getting naked. Living in seclusion on farmland somewhere in rural New York, they don’t chant in unison or sacrifice animals (at least, not by design), but otherwise they cover all the bases. They are led by a man named Patrick, played by a soft-spoken but forceful John Hawkes, whose scraggly facial hair and wiry frame remind of Charles Manson (he even sings and plays the guitar), and they all happily assume new identities while forgoing any interest in material possessions. There is truth, I suspect, in all of this, but writer/director Sean Durkin doesn’t appear to be aiming at realism. He’s going for atmosphere, and to that end Patrick’s cult is the monster in the dark making things go bump. It’s the stuff of our nightmares.

Why would anyone ever live this way? In observing the shattered psyche of a young woman who is known as Martha in the real world and as Marcy May in Patrick’s cult (except when she answers the phone, in which case, like all the women, she identifies herself as Marlene), Durkin’s film gives us several reasons. A heightened sense of community, fostered by a communal existence within an exclusivist colony, would be one. A strong sense of significance, cultivated by a leader who knows how to look people in the eye and tell them what they need to hear, would be another. But not to be overlooked, at least in Martha’s case, is the steep price of the nonrefundable admission. Don’t misunderstand: Patrick’s cult doesn’t collect dues. It takes from its members something far more expensive: the ability to leave the cult the same people they were when they entered it. Forget about name changes, forget about severed family ties. Once you’ve been the victim of ritualistic sexual assault, or an accomplice to it, you aren’t who you were. Why stay? Because you can’t really go back.

This is what Martha learns the hard way. At the outset of the film, she physically leaves the cult, but mentally and emotionally she never escapes. She is played by Elizabeth Olsen, sister to famous child stars Mary Kate and Ashley, who makes her breakout performance at 21. The film observes Martha as she holes up in the lakefront Connecticut home owned by her estranged sister (Sarah Paulson’s Lucy) and the brother-in-law she didn’t know she had (Hugh Dancy’s Ted) and intermittently flashes back to her past on the farm, memories of which are so raw and oppressing that they consume her present. In another film, if Martha had come back from the horrors of war, we’d all agree she was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. She’s haunted, jumpy and distant, torn between the gruesomeness of where she was and the loneliness of where she is. But in this film Martha comes off as just plain crazy, as Durkin milks her suffering as an excuse to ogle the perversity of her experience in the cult.

It’s so obvious that Martha is seriously traumatized that it’s a wonder her sister and brother-in-law, who haven’t got a clue where she’s been all these years, don’t immediately rush her to the nearest hospital when she phones Lucy out of the blue and asks to be picked up at she’s-not-quite-sure-where. Although Paulson and Dancy make the best of their roles, the film’s biggest weakness is the way it’s constantly manipulating these supporting characters in order to heighten the tension. One moment Dancy’s Ted is preaching understanding. The next he’s throwing a hissy about the stresses of his day job and how he can’t let Martha ruin his vacation. Later (mild spoilers), Ted all but gives his wife an “it’s her or me” ultimatum, which wouldn’t be so unreasonable if the tirade hadn’t been sparked by an incident in which Ted startled Martha by waking her up in the middle of the night, chased her up a flight of stairs and then took offense when Martha reflexively kicked at him. (Memo to Ted: just like “no” means no, screaming and running mean “please don’t get closer.”) It’s not that I can’t imagine anyone reacting like this, it’s that I can’t imagine the clearly intelligent Lucy and Ted failing to realize that Martha is a time bomb given that her ticking clock and dynamite are almost always in view.

But, again, Durkin is seeking atmosphere, not realism. And while Martha Marcy May Marlene is heavy-handed in its application of trauma, it’s undeniably effective at depicting the suffocating pressure of trauma’s unrelenting grip. In her first day at the lake house, Martha asks her sister how far they are from where she was picked up. About three hours, Lucy tells her, a long way. But probably not far enough. For Martha, her experiences on the farm will always be too close to home. (Major spoilers ahead.) The film ends with Martha leaving the lake house to head to get some medical help and try to start her life anew but with a black SUV from Patrick’s cult tailing them on their journey, as if ready to run them off the road and do to Martha whatever Patrick does to runaways. Is the car really there? Is Martha just imagining it? It’s impossible to say, but the point is clear: for Martha it doesn’t matter. She may have checked out of Patrick’s cult, but she can never really leave.

The Edge of Art: The Mill and the Cross

2011-11-05T08:21:00.000-04:00

In The Mill and the Cross a vast landscape and a vast canvas are one and the same. Director Lech Majewski’s overlong but unforgettable film, based on a book by Michael Francis Gibson, observes Pieter Bruegel as he conceives his 1564 work The Way to Calvary, in which the Passion is reimagined in a valley in Flanders, with Spanish soldiers doling out the abuse normally ascribed to Romans. As the movie opens, Bruegel stands in front of a panorama of not-quite-still activity that represents either what the painting will be or what it is already. Dozens of live figures – mostly humans, but also horses, cows and so on – stand as if posing, and Bruegel looks upon them as if examining an instant in time. The Way to Calvary doesn’t come to life in this film so much as life becomes The Way to Calvary. The film follows Bruegel, played by Rutger Hauer, as he walks through his hometown and finds inspiration to put into his painting, or it follows him as he metaphorically walks through his painting and sees his community within it. Maybe both. It’s difficult to tell where the real ends and the imagined begins.

That’s the joy of The Mill and the Cross, which at its best demonstrates that paintings, while static, aren’t inanimate. Majewski’s film both burrows within the painting and explores beyond its frame. We enter the rocky precipice wherein the miller lives and works with his family, before ultimately standing like God above the activity below. We enter the home of a modest couple who share their living space with a cow. We enter a forest where a tree is being felled, eventually to become an apparatus for torture. These vignettes aren’t at the core of the visual narrative depicted in The Way to Calvary, but they are part of its apparent overall message: Bruegel’s painting suggests that the cruelty of the powerful and the apathy of the masses that must have been present in Jesus Christ’s bloody walk to Golgotha could be found in his own era, too. And not unlike the way Bruegel enlivened the Passion through a modernization of setting, Majewski enlivens The Way to Calvary through a modernization of form, as an inert painting becomes animated cinema.

There’s no question that this alteration changes the depth of The Way to Calvary, but whether it enhances it is another matter. As far as The Mill and the Cross feels from the 3-D pictures that are chewing up about 20 percent of the screens at multiplexes these days, the effect is strangely reminiscent: Majewski’s film takes us “into” the painting and allows us to look around, but the depth of clarity it provides is inconsistent, and for each amplification there is also an inherent reduction. What’s lost is our ability to gaze upon The Way to Calvary and control our own focus, find our own perspective, build our own narrative. What’s gained is a kind of multidimensionality that a painting lacks, but this enhancement is only relative. The Mill and the Cross has no distinct narrative or Syd Field-prescribed conflict. It has little discernable dialogue. And it features a performance by Charlotte Rampling that would be considered a brief cameo if it wasn’t also the female lead. Majewski’s film provides “depth,” by one definition of the word, but it begs to be filled in. Like James Cameron’s Avatar, the way The Mill and the Cross depicts its story is arresting, but what it depicts is wearisome.

Of course, mileage will vary. The woman seated behind me in the small, sparsely populated theater broke into brief yet confident applause as the film ended. The guy off to my left accosted an usher to tell her how much he hated it. Neither reaction particularly surprised me. The Mill and the Cross is dazzling in snippets, but it’s never more powerful than in its first 15 minutes, and after that it begins to feel like an experiment gone too far. It would make a fantastic short film, but even at 92 minutes Majewski leaves too much of his canvas unpainted. This is a minimalist production in every respect but two: running time and creative vision. The Way to Calvary is an epic.

The Conversations: Barry Lyndon

2011-10-21T13:04:00.000-04:00

Just in time for some weekend reading, the latest edition of The Conversations has posted at The House Next Door. This time around, Ed Howard and I discuss Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon – a film that has been celebrated, ignored and just plain overlooked. Although an adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray's novel, Barry Lyndon is a distinctly Kubrickian work, unfolding at a deliberate pace with warm, naturally lit images that contrasts with the director’s familiar cold remove. This was my first time watching Barry Lyndon, which had always managed to elude me, and Ed was returning to the film for the first time in several years. Head on over to The House Next Door and read The Conversations and join the discussion.

Click here for an archive of The Conversations.

The Men Behind the Curtain: The Ides of March

2011-10-11T21:07:00.001-04:00

Near the beginning of The Ides of March, two political operatives are having drinks with a reporter named Ida Horowicz (Marisa Tomei). One of them is Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Paul Zara, the veteran campaign manager whose gray hair and ample waistline are symbols of the wear and tear of his chosen career. The other one is Ryan Gosling’s Stephen Myers, a young, good-looking crackerjack strategist for whom politics hasn’t lost its shine. Paul is a lifer; if he weren’t employed by this campaign, he’d be chain-smoking his way through another one. But Stephen, while not new to politics, is still in search of his dreams. He doesn’t want his candidate to win because he’s on the campaign; he’s on the campaign because he wants his candidate to win. The candidate in question is Governor Mike Morris, played by George Clooney, who also directed the picture, and while Paul no doubt sees in Morris the opportunity for political success, Stephen sees in him the opportunity to bring about Real Change. Morris must win, Stephen argues, because the country needs him. But Ida isn’t buying it. The system is the system, she argues, and politicians are politicians. “He’ll let you down sooner or later,” she says. And unless your only exposure to politics is The West Wing, you know she’s probably right.

The Ides of March is a throwback to 1970s films about political disillusionment that seizes on the emotions of the moment. Direct comparisons of Clooney’s Morris to President Obama are problematic, but Gosling’s Stephen is an effective stand-in for so many educated young(er) people in this country who thought Obama was change we could believe in. Stephen brags that at 30 he has more political experience than most people 10 years older, but his affection for Morris blinds him to all the lessons that he must have already learned – first and foremost of which is that politicians are more alike than they are different. (The rest of the review contains spoilers.) Because we know politics, and even more because we know politics movies, it’s of little surprise that Ida’s warning proves prophetic. Adapted from Beau Willimon’s Farragut North – a play with a title that’s sexy only to those inside the Beltway – The Ides of March is yet another movie in which idealism is snuffed out by the inherent corruption of the system. It’s a storyline we’ve encountered many times before, both at the cinema and in life, and yet it possesses a hint of originality: If at first glance Stephen appears to be a victim of the system, a closer look reveals that he was a wheel of the machine all along.

As the brains of Morris’ presidential campaign, Stephen and Paul are the men behind the curtain of their great and powerful candidate, and not just figuratively: in one scene the two strategists argue with one another on the other side of a huge American flag that’s serving as the backdrop for one of Morris’ stump speeches. Because Clooney never portrays Morris as a dolt, he never seems to be the mindless puppet that, say, George W. Bush is in Oliver Stone’s W., but even if Morris has his own voice his words are clearly Stephen’s, and they aren’t always genuine. Early in the film, Stephen encourages Morris to call for legislation that would make it mandatory for 18-year-olds to do two years of civil service in exchange for paid college education. The plan’s genius, Stephen points out, is that the only ones likely to oppose it aren’t eligible to vote. As Stephen explains the plan to Morris, it never occurs to him that by influencing Morris’ public stance he is orchestrating a deception. A small one, perhaps, but one that nevertheless demonstrates that politicians are often only as corrupt as their handlers. Later on, Stephen will go wide-eyed when he learns that Morris isn’t the man he thought he was, but that shouldn’t distract us from the way that Stephen covers up Morris’ mistakes without blinking. He isn’t corrupted by the system. He’s made for it.

To the degree that The Ides of March provides anything resembling potent commentary, that’s the extent of it. After a rather promising opening third that reminds of early Alan J. Pakula movies, the film quickly devolves into a plot-heavy John Grisham-esque thriller that reminds of late Pakula, with some circuitously preachy David Mamet thrown in. It’s a movie about characters more so than an examination of character. But thanks to the talent of the cast, that’s not so bad. Gosling has a silent intensity that reminds less of his own silent-intense performance in this year’s Drive than of Al Pacino’s titular performance in Serpico. Clooney, no surprise, exudes electable charm and power-hungry strength as Morris. Hoffman portrays the confidence and paranoia of a guy who knows all the tricks and fears they’ll be used against him. Paul Giamatti oozes ruthlessness as rival strategist Tom Duffy. (And, seriously, there's something wrong with Hollywood when it takes this long for Hoffman and Giamatti to be pitted against one another as intellectual brawlers.) Jeffrey Wright, as a senator with his eyes on a cabinet position, is engaging in the odd, twitchy, stealing-scenes-from-himself sort of way that Wright usually is. And Evan Rachel Wood captivates as the young campaign intern, Molly, who knows exactly what she wants and, alas, gets much more than that.

The film’s best scene is one at a hotel bar in which Stephen attempts to seduce Molly and Molly seduces Stephen even harder. Clooney captures Gosling and Wood in sexy, golden-hued close-ups that suggest he was paying attention when he starred in a similar scene in Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight. On the surface the scene might appear to offer nothing more than some perfunctory sexual energy, but it’s worth noting that Molly entices Stephen into bed much the same way that Stephen looks to entice votes from the public: she tells him exactly what he wants to hear, while acting according to her own best interests. This, The Ides of March seems to suggest, is the real problem. What's ailing us is that, from politicians to campaign managers to reporters to mostly innocent interns, we're all in it for ourselves. This is hardly a shocking conclusion, and the film also suffers from a plot that requires several worst-case scenarios to play out almost simultaneously in order to create a lick of tension. But Clooney and his actors make the film episodically thrilling. If on the whole it’s an all too familiar cliché, well, so is our political system.

A Positive Prognosis: 50/50

2011-10-02T21:21:00.001-04:00

Are there too many cancer movies, or not enough? It’s tempting to say the former. Each year it seems there’s at least one new movie about someone getting the disease, fighting it and – depending on whether its an uplifter or a tear-jerker – surviving it or dying from it. There are no surprises anymore. The arc of the cancer movie is as familiar as the disease itself. Yet it isn’t anywhere near as prevalent, and maybe that’s the actual problem. When one considers that half of men and one third of women are expected to develop cancer (of various significance) in their lifetime, it’s clear that cancer is underrepresented at the movies. The result is that cancer rarely factors on the big screen outside of full-blown Cancer Cinema. Just as mainstream American movies about homosexual romance tend to be more about homosexuality than romance, movies that include cancer are inevitably about the disease. In Cancer Cinema, the afflicted subject never starts a new business, solves a murder mystery, pulls a casino heist or does anything else that might suggest cancer was just an element of life. No, the disease must define them. To a Hollywood screenwriter, not obsessing over a character’s cancer would be like ignoring Superman’s ability to fly.

50/50, written by Will Reiser, doesn't offer much of an exception to the trend. Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Cancer Character – his friends call him Adam – it has all the hallmarks of the too familiar sub-genre, starting out with the fact that Cancer Character is 100 percent healthy until all of a sudden he isn’t (Cancer Characters are never smokers, you might have noticed). Quite predictably, 50/50 has scenes in which Cancer Character receives the bad news and then spreads the word to people who don’t know how to respond. It has scenes in which Cancer Character is bravely yet tragically upbeat about the diagnosis, refusing to acknowledge the anger inside him. It has scenes in which Cancer Character, who of course is bald by this point, goes to counseling sessions that borrow from the equally familiar Help Me Help You sub-genre wherein Adam goes from stonewalling, to storming out of a session in anger, to purging all those inner demons in a moment of triumphant catharsis. And so on. Even when 50/50’s narrative goes somewhere slightly novel, replacing the usual dutiful girlfriend with the selfish, irresponsible lying bitch girlfriend, its intentions can be spotted a mile away. We know instantly that Cancer Character’s girlfriend Beth will flake out on him because 1) she has creepy eyelashes, 2) she’s played by Bryce Dallas Howard, 3) she promises to stick by him when he initially gives her an out and 4) she doesn’t like to give head. And yet for all the ways that 50/50 is like so many cancer movies we’ve seen before, it differs in one ultimately redeeming way: Cancer Character’s biggest problem isn’t that he has cancer. Not quite.

Admittedly, it’s a distinction that you have to squint to recognize, but the prevailing challenge that Adam must overcome in 50/50 isn’t cancer itself but the loneliness that it creates. After his diagnosis, Adam has trouble relating to people. His girlfriend gets him a dog he doesn’t want. His mother (Anjelica Huston) gives him concern he doesn’t want. His best friend, Seth Rogen’s Kyle, encourages him to use cancer as a hook to meet girls, which gives his disease attention he doesn’t want. And his therapist, Anna Kendrick’s Katherine, gives him encouragement he doesn’t want. All of these people mean well, even the selfish girlfriend, but their attempts to support Adam only make him feel more alone. No one around him understands what he’s going through, physically or emotionally, no matter how hard they try. And none of them grasp that it’s of little comfort to learn that one’s feelings of abnormality are perfectly normal. Cancer is taking over Adam’s lifestyle even faster than the tumor his spreading along his spine. His chance of survival may be 50/50, but at this rate his self-identity doesn’t stand a chance.

That 50/50 is the rare movie to give as much attention to cancer’s devastating effect on lifestyle as to its devastating effect on life is, I suspect, a stroke of luck more than a product of daring. This is, by design, a rude yet lighthearted comedy that has no interest in portraying cancer at its worst. But while it would be fair to criticize 50/50 for tiptoeing around grimness at every opportunity, I wonder if in its squeamishness it makes a tentative step in the right direction. At this point it isn’t just movie fans who have grown tired of Cancer Character clichés on the big screen, real people with cancer are tired of having those clichés ascribed to them, too. In its own way, 50/50 hints at the very real desire of so many cancer patients to keep the disease from becoming their identity. When Adam’s doctor is as uncaring as possible in delivering the bad news, yeah, it’s a sign that the movie is trying to make us feel sorry for Adam by any means necessary, but at the same time the scene conveys the shittiness of being an individual one moment and a statistic the next.

Directed by Jonathan Levine, the strength of 50/50 is the performance of Gordon-Levitt, who reminds us why he has the stuff to be on the A-list and also why he isn’t there already. To his detriment, one of Gordon-Levitt’s greatest skills is the ability to be ordinary. It’s what makes him the perfect modern twenty-something everyman in (500) Days of Summer and the perfect modern twenty-something with cancer – rather than just a Cancer Character – in 50/50. Gordon-Levitt is unfailingly relatable, never untouchable, even in moments of major emotion, and he can adjust between happiness and darkness so gracefully that it can be easy to forget how distinctly different those moods really are. In 50/50, Gordon-Levitt embraces Adam's misery – his full-throated scream near the end of the film is raw and heartbreaking – but never at the expense of letting the character get lost inside his disease.

The film concludes (big spoiler warning) with the cancerous tumor removed and Adam’s identity still intact, and it’s to the credit of the film, and Gordon-Levitt’s charming chemistry with Kendrick specifically, that an entirely cancer-free sequel exploring the relationship between Adam and Katherine doesn’t seem like a crazy idea (which isn't to suggest it'll happen). “Now what?” Katherine asks Adam at the start of what will be their first post-cancer date, and that's the question I have for Cancer Cinema, which must aspire to let cancer patients be something other than cancer trademarked victims and heroes. 50/50 isn’t the cure for the common cancer movie, but there’s enough here to leave hopeful that someday we might find one.

Ticket to the Dark Side: Catching Hell

2011-09-27T07:00:00.040-04:00

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light.
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville – mighty Casey has struck out.

Published in 1888, Ernest Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat” is designed as a portrait of utter baseball catastrophe. As the poem opens, failure is imminent. The home team is down two runs and facing its last out. But then two men get on base and the club’s power hitter comes to the plate, and suddenly hope swells again. Mighty Casey watches one strike go by. Then he watches another. And then he swings … and misses, and the game ends, and the poem ends, and we’re left with the aching feeling of what might have been. For 115 years, this is what baseball heartbreak looked like – victory within reach, fans daring to believe, and the hero in the uniform failing to hit it out of the ballpark. On October 14, 2003, baseball heartbreak got a new face. This time around there was a foul ball within reach. The time fans dared to turn on one of their own. This time a Little League coach in a turtleneck and a Walkman had to be escorted from the ballpark for his safety. This was the night that mighty Casey’s place in baseball infamy was surpassed by a quiet, unassuming fan named Steve Bartman.

If you’re a baseball fan you know this story, which is the subject of Alex Gibney’s Catching Hell. Or do you? Gibney’s film is about the events of October 14, 2003, but just as much it’s about our selective memory of that night. So before you watch the film, which premieres tonight on ESPN at 8 pm ET, ask yourself: What do you remember? You remember the play, certainly: A foul ball slicing down the left field sideline at Wrigley Field; the crowd standing up and reaching to catch it; Chicago Cubs left fielder Moises Alou leaping up along the railing, trying to catch it, too; and the ball bouncing off Steve Bartman’s hands in the front row, preventing Alou from making the play. You also remember the aftermath: Alou throwing a temper tantrum that Lou Piniella would have found excessive and Bartman sitting motionless in his seat as Chicago’s finest screamed at him, and worse. You probably also remember the stakes: the Cubs were trying to get to their first World Series since 1945 in hope of winning it for the first time since 1908. You might even remember how many outs stood between the Cubs and the Series at that point, Cubs fans certainly do: five. But do you remember anything else? Do you remember the score at the time or by the end of that inning? Do you remember the other muffed catch that followed Bartman’s? Heck, do you even remember the Cubs’ opponent that night? Chances are good you don’t. In memory, the event is distilled into three images so tight in their geography that it’s easy to forget there were eight other Cubs on the field at the time. Flash! We see the hands of fans reaching. Flash! We see Alou screaming. Flash! We see Bartman dejected and stunned still, the loneliest man on the planet. It’s that last image that really lingers, like the last five words of Thayer’s poem.

It’s the indelibility of that Bartman image that fascinates Gibney. In a game that the Cubs wound up losing by 5 runs, how did Bartman get singled out? In a postseason series with yet another game to play – a home game at that – how did Bartman get the brunt of the blame for the Cubs’ failure to make the World Series? A lot of reasons, it turns out. Chief among them, 1) Alou’s explosive reaction, which caused all eyes at Wrigley Field and on sofas and barstools across the country to focus on Bartman, 2) Alex Gonzalez’s oft forgotten error, which rather than shifting the focus from Bartman managed to leave it on him at precisely the point FOX broadcasters zeroed in on their target, 3) the Florida Marlins’ relentless offensive explosion, which buried the Cubs with 8 small-ball runs over the course of that inning while poor Bartman roasted under the spotlight and, not to be discounted, 4) the Cubs’ culture of losing that had fans expecting doom from the start. But those are only half of it. And by the end of his examination Gibney wonders if Bartman got pinned with the blame simply because he was a natural scapegoat: an innocent who had the burdens of others thrust upon him.

Catching Hell was originally slated to be part of ESPN Films’ “30 for 30” series (you might remember the clip of Bartman reaching for the ball from the television ads) and indeed the documentary has a personal perspective that fits the series’ modus operandi. Gibney provides the film with traditional narration (some of it entirely unnecessary) and also splices in clips from a radio interview in which he describes his memories of the incident and his intent. Gibney comes to the project as a Red Sox fan who lived through one of baseball’s other most famous gaffes, the “Bill Buckner play” from the 1986 World Series, and wonders if the two are connected. They are. In both cases a series of familiar mistakes are forgotten in the shadow of a memorably unusual one – a ball going through a player’s legs in one case, a player and a fan fighting for the same ball in another. Gibney doesn’t get an interview with Bartman in Catching Hell (Bartman has refused interviews or other publicity since becoming suddenly famous), but in a way he doesn’t need to. He finds a voice for Bartman through Buckner, who lived for decades with the unfairness of the media’s and a community’s oversized obsession with an uncharacteristic mistake and the villainy that was ascribed to him as a result. Buckner tells Gibney he’s at peace with what happened, but his interviews are so emotionally precise that it’s obvious the pain of his experiences is never too far away. If this is what being the scapegoat must mean to a former major leaguer – a guy who was paid to make plays – imagine what it must have felt like for Bartman – a guy who paid money to be close to the game.

Was Bartman to blame that night? Gibney settles that once and for all by scrutinizing the Bartman play with the intensity of Jim Garrison deconstructing JFK’s assassination. Through various replays, some of them computer enhanced, it’s clear that Bartman does prevent Alou from making the catch, but whether he deserves blame is another matter. Gibney’s frequent replays make it clear that 1) Bartman was one of many people reaching for the ball that night, 2) he couldn’t see the oncoming Alou, who was approaching from back and to the left – back and to the left – of the forward-facing Bartman and 3) the radio play-by-play pumping through Bartman’s headphones was of no help whatsoever. Regardless, even if Bartman had been worthy of blame, he didn’t deserve the abuse that followed. Catching Hell provides a sobering glimpse of the mob mentality as an overflow crowd chants “Asshole!” in Bartman’s direction. It’s a sickening display made all the more depressing because of the willingness with which Bartman accepts the abuse. One wonders, in the moment might Bartman have feared that his abusers were in the right?

I hope not. For me, the Steve Bartman story is the most tragic event in baseball history not tied to racism or physical injury. By reaching for the foul ball, Bartman was doing what any of us would have done, and yet by suffering unforgivable abuse, apologizing to the franchise and its fans and never pointing a finger at anyone but himself, Bartman displayed a fortitude and class beyond almost all of us. Watching Catching Hell isn’t unlike experiencing any other documentary about social injustice. It isn’t a baseball movie so much as a story about humanity. The "30 for 30" series is populated by numerous powerful films that give precise detail to their subjects, but I’m not sure any of them actually give something to sports like Catching Hell does. Gibney’s film is an attempt to correct our mental history books so that we might remember the Bartman game in a different light and, hopefully, avoid a repeat of it in the future. Baseball is better for it being made, and we’re better for experiencing it. I hope that the people who booed and blamed Bartman watch this and feel ashamed. I hope the normally astute Mike Wilbon sees this and stops using “Bartman” like a four-letter word. I hope Bartman sees this and sits firmly in the knowledge that he didn’t fail baseball that night. Baseball failed him.

A VORP of 16.3: Moneyball

2011-09-25T14:28:00.002-04:00

“It’s hard not to be romantic about baseball,” Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane says more than once in Moneyball. Truer words have never been spoken. Sports thrive on sentimental idealizations – unconscious efforts to tie what happens on the field to our values off it. We want our sports heroes to look like the Greek gods we make them out to be. Even more, we want them to be good people. We want losers to be jerks receiving their comeuppance. We want to believe that victorious teams have chemistry and camaraderie, and that they win because they want it more and work harder for it. Beyond all of that, many of us want to believe that we matter, that the team couldn’t do it without our support, and that the position in which we sit as we watch the game, or whether we watch it at all, affects the balance of the force that decides the outcomes of the games. Moneyball opens with a shot of Beane sitting in Oakland’s dark and empty stadium listening to his team take on the New York Yankees in a postseason game 3,000 miles away. Beane flips on the transistor radio sitting on his knee to get an audio glimpse of what’s happening. Then he flips it off. Then he flips the radio on again. Then he flips it off. Oakland’s season has come down to this moment of this game and yet Beane avoids listening – not so much because he can’t bear the stress of elimination but because he’s fearful that his listening might somehow hurt his team’s chances of coming through in the clutch.

Moneyball is about the effort to demythicize baseball, to see it for what it really is. Based on the tremendous (if imperfect) book by Michael Lewis, it tells the tale of Beane’s efforts to keep Oakland and its subterranean payroll competitive against the likes of New York and its money-printing machine. Beane realizes that for as long as the A’s try to beat the Yankees by playing their game – acquiring the consensus premier talent that fetches baseball’s highest salaries – it will forever be playing from behind. In order to close the gap, Beane and the A’s must redefine what talent looks like, starting by accepting that the naked eye is an imperfect judge of talent. Beane’s idea is to embrace the philosophies of Bill James and assess talent through the stat sheet and, just as important, let a computer determine which stats are worth paying attention to. This all seems fairly logical when read on the page, but when put into practice Beane receives everything from puzzled looks to hostile objections from baseball’s romanticists. In their eyes, Beane is suggesting the A’s should pick whom to date based on a computer algorithm, with aesthetic beauty and chemistry thrown out the window. In their eyes, Beane is shitting on romance.

Adapted for the screen by Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian, Moneyball does a commendable job of conveying the magnitude of this culture shift. Early scenes show Beane sitting with Oakland’s grizzled scouts, men whose careers are based on the belief that they can spot talent better than the skilled guy next to them, and much better than the proverbial kid on a computer in his mother’s basement. As different players are tossed out for discussion, the scouts provide input on the player’s swing, his looks and even the looks of his girlfriend (the idea of the latter being that if a stud athlete doesn’t have a smoking hot girlfriend, he must have self-esteem issues). Sorkin and Zaillian may be exaggerating a bit there, but the genius of the scene is the moment when Beane points out that one of the stud hitting prospects has a mediocre batting average. “If he’s such a good hitter,” Beane says, “why isn’t he hitting?” The scouts suggest the player needs more time to prove his talent, but Beane doesn’t buy it. In these scouts, Beane sees the confused girlfriend who thinks that getting married will fix the intimacy problems she has with her boyfriend. They aren’t evaluating, they’re dreaming. And when they look at the list of available prospects and debate who to bring in to replace their departed talent, Beane sees the suddenly single 50-year-old male who assumes that his next relationship will start with a 25-year-old woman, because that’s the way his last relationship began. It’s hard not to be romantic about baseball.

Funny then that this is a baseball movie that could benefit from some romance – not the Crash Davis-Annie Savoy variety, but the other kind found in Bull Durham, Field of Dreams or The Natural, those three baseball classics. Moneyball is lacking a convincing love of the game, not for lack of effort but lack of execution. The flashbacks to Beane’s own playing career exemplify the imperfection of “can’t miss” scouting reports, which explains why Beane would be so willing to rethink Oakland’s philosophy for talent acquisition, but the film’s attempt to portray Beane as a baseball lifer desperate to feel the game’s glory falls flat, no matter how many times Beane articulates his desires. Played by Brad Pitt, Beane is one of the least charismatic lead characters in a film that isn’t intentionally defined by the main character’s lack of charisma (see: The Man Who Wasn’t There). He smiles, he spits tobacco, he squints his eyes, but he has no personality. Jonah Hill fares much better as Peter Brand, the Yale graduate and stats geek who uses various algorithms to slice through baseball’s conventional wisdom with the precision of a surgeon. Short, stout and lacking the swagger of a former professional athlete, Peter is the perfect contrast to Beane and a personification of the change he brings to the A’s organization.

Sorkin projects are often recognized by their wit and the gracefulness with which complex subjects are hewn into easily understood morality plays, but most characteristically they are recognized by their hyperactive hypertalkiness. Moneyball, surprisingly enough, has none of that. It’s a wordy picture, to be sure, but it unfolds with the deliberateness of a man chopping wood, not the machinegun rat-a-tat-tat of Sorkin’s The West Wing or The Social Network. Bennett Miller, directing his first film since 2005’s Capote, stages the scenes simply – lots of shot/reverse-shot – as if expecting the dialogue to sing like in a Bette Davis movie. It doesn’t. There’s a scene in which Beane tears into the A’s for having a festive atmosphere in the locker room following a loss: he slams the stereo with a baseball bat and then knocks over a big plastic water jug. In the stillness of the team’s stunned reaction, a displaced plastic plate can be heard spinning and wobbling to the floor in the background. “That’s what losing sounds like,” Beane says, and alas that’s what this film often sounds like. Its silences have an empty echo.

None of this is to imply that the film isn’t sometimes wonderfully alive. (Spoiler warning, unless you’re familiar with baseball history or sports movie conventions, in which case never mind.) When the A’s are in the midst of their record-setting 20-game winning streak those empty echoes are displaced by reverberations of excitement and joy. But notice how they’re achieved: mostly by inserting archival footage from the real games. Unmentioned in the movie, because it’s really beside the point, is that the “moneyball” era of baseball began in what was also the height of the steroid era, and fittingly enough these clips from actual games are artificial performance enhancers. What’s winning us over isn’t the writing, acting or directing, it’s the thrill of baseball itself. The slight exception is when Miller recreates that 20th win, deftly connecting the historical footage with the Pitt-led backstage drama. It’s one of the few times that Miller stages on-field action, but it’s skillfully accomplished, in large part because the guys playing the A’s look like real baseball players (and, sure enough, some of them used to be).

Critics of Lewis’ book will likely be disappointed, though not surprised, to see that the movie is faithful to the source material’s problematic portrayal of the 2002 A’s. Sure enough, Sorkin and Zaillian offer no mention of the team’s outstanding starting pitching (headlined by Tim Hudson, Barry Zito and Mark Mulder) or its cast of budding stars (including Miguel Tejada and Ray Durham), each of whom made bigger impacts than Justice, Bradford or Scott Hatteberg, and each of whom were with the team not because they’d been discovered by some revolutionary formula but because they, like Jason Giambi and Johnny Damon before them, simply hadn’t reached their first big paydays yet. But as historically misleading as these omissions might be, they’re dramatically irrelevant. In the bigger picture, the impact of the “moneyball” A’s was actually even greater than what the film describes, influencing teams to value on-base percentage over batting average, to ignore runs batted in, to put the red light on average base-stealers (a move that changed with the “end” of the steroid era), and so on. Thus, I don’t object to the way Moneyball is faithful to the book but to the theme-altering way it departs from it.

Although Beane is the jock-genius of both the movie and the book, the printed version of Moneyball isn’t a character analysis at all. It isn’t about inner demons, hatred of losing, fear of failure, or a cute daughter who can sing and play the guitar. Lewis’ book is about baseball. No, more specific than that: it’s about the science of baseball. The insertion of Beane’s personal life into the movie is Sorkin and Zaillian’s attempt to keep the film relatable to the nonsports fan, to humanize the story and give it a familiar dramatic arc. It works, I suppose, but it creates a bitter irony. This movie about a man daring to challenge deeply engrained conventions is itself utterly conventional. To make a movie about Moneyball in its own image would have required a willingness to forget what a sports movie is supposed to look like. It would have required breaking the mold. Moneyball is more than adequate, but to be great, to contend with the best of the best, it needed to dare to be different.

Addendum: Confused by the title of this review? Sorry, I couldn’t resist getting baseball stats geeky. “VORP” is the acronym for Value Over Replacement Player. Remember the scene in the movie when Jonah Hill’s character says that what they’re looking for is a certain number of wins, which will take a certain number of runs, etc. VORP is a tool that combines all the stats a player will contribute and puts a numerical value to them that is compared to the average (or “replacement”) player. A great player, then, would have a VORP in the 80s. A just better than average player would have a VORP around 16. Hence the title.

Deadwood: Honoring Cocksuckers and Hoopleheads

2011-09-24T19:33:00.000-04:00

As anyone following me on Twitter knows, I purchased all three seasons of Deadwood without having seen an episode. I was drawn by three things: 1) the buzz I’d heard about the series, 2) the fact that it was a Western (they don’t make many of those anymore) and 3) the 50-percent off deal that was too good to pass up. From late spring into early autumn I went through all three seasons, coming to the end last night.

In lieu of a traditional review, of an episode, a season or the series, I’ve decided instead that the best way for me to honor this decidedly character-driven series is to rank its many characters, while mentioning some favorite moments along the way.

I’m sure this goes without saying, but the following is written with the expectation that readers have watched the series. Major spoilers ahead.

We start at the top:

BEST IN SHOW

Al Swearengen (Ian McShane)
Is it possible to drift into hyperbole when discussing Ian McShane’s Al Swearengen? I’m not sure it is. Al is one of the most compelling characters I’ve ever come across, on any sized screen, powerfully acted by a man who seems to have been born to play him. McShane was 62 when the series began, with a long list of mostly forgettable TV performances to his credit. Imagine what it must be like to find the job you were born to do near the age when most people retire. I suspect that McShane’s years of hard work in relative anonymity must have informed his portrayal of Al, who bears the wisdom and weariness of a life spent clawing for every opportunity and isn’t about to let go of his brass ring once he’s found it. McShane’s Al is so brilliantly conceived that to write about his intensity of character at any length seems as pointless as rambling about the temperature of the sun. So for now I’ll close with this, as this won’t be the only time Al is mentioned in this piece: Look at the following list of adjectives and tell me which one best describes Al: profane, conniving, clever, ruthless, indomitable, or volatile.

Can you possibly rank those choices? Can you possibly put one above the rest? The difficulty of that assignment is a testament to the character’s staggering range of absolute magnificence. In a violent rage or in quiet contemplation, greasing the gears of the system or cleaning blood off the floor, in the midst of yet another wordy monologue or sitting silently in his bed after a near-death experience, Al is Deadwood’s unfailingly awesome character. He is the sun that brings life to the entire series.

FIRST RUNNER-UP

Wild Bill Hickock (Keith Carradine)
From the most dominating presence in each of the series’ 36 episodes, we now move to a character who appears in only four episodes but casts a shadow over the entire series. Other than Calamity Jane, Keith Carradine’s Wild Bill is the only character most of the show’s audience is likely to know by name when the series begins. Wild Bill is a legend, and Deadwood spends its initial episodes feeling out the validity of that legend. Is Wild Bill truly the fastest gun around? Is Wild Bill a man of honor? Is Wild Bill a man to fear? Even after his true-to-history death those questions still aren’t easy to answer. Carradine’s performance suggests a man who is impervious to the world around him and fragile against himself. There’s an aura about him. Carradine speaks each line with crisp, patient deliberateness as if Wild Bill can’t remember the last time someone dared to interrupt him. His “listen to the thunder” warning to Alma Garret is delivered with the heavenly reverberations of Zeus throwing lightning bolts. Wild Bill sets the tenor for the fierce battle of wills that unfolds throughout the titular town for the 32 episodes after his killing. It’s Wild Bill who shows us how a man carries the confidence of his past into his new setting. It’s Wild Bill who shows us that even the strong don’t always survive. It’s Wild Bill who shows us that death in Deadwood is often swift and unceremonious. It’s Wild Bill who serves as the crack of thunder for the storm that rolls in behind him.

SECOND RUNNER-UP

Doc Cochran (Brad Dourif)
With the exception of Al and Wild Bill, there is no character I enjoyed more completely or consistently than Brad Dourif’s Doc Cochran. Initial credit must go to series creator David Milch and the show’s numerous writers who realized what a special opportunity they had in Doc. In a town controlled by self-serving hotheads with a taste for violence surpassed only by a thirst for control, the most powerful man in Deadwood isn’t any guy with a knife but the one man who knows how to treat a stab wound. Doc constantly drifts amidst the chaos like an NFL referee: simultaneously ignored and obeyed. It’s a genius conceit that’s amplified by Dourif’s fully committed performance, which begins with that hunched posture and shuffled walk that reminds of a man scampering over hot coals with a steamer trunk on his shoulders. The one man in Deadwood who can shout down an irate Al Swearengen, or lecture a typically irritable Cy Tolliver, or adopt an air of disapproval toward an enraged Hearst? It’s the meek looking doctor who is anything but. What really wins me over about Doc is his overwhelming desire to help people in a town that’s out to spill blood. Doc can’t help but help, despite the inevitable.

Perhaps it’s no surprise then that my favorite moment of the series – and nothing comes close – is the one late in Season 2: Episode 4 when Al finally passes the gleet that had been giving him such discomfort. To that point, Al has received uncomfortable rectal massages from a prostitute, nearly died on the floor of his office when no one dared to open the door to check on him and endured metal prongs being stuck up his penis in search of the obstruction. But his pain is just beginning. The obstruction is removed with Dan holding Al down, Johnny administering smelling salts and Doc putting those metal prongs back up Al’s penis while Trixie milks Al’s prick like an udder. When the obstruction clears and bloody urine drips onto the floor, no one is more relieved than Doc Cochran, who cradles Al in his arms and says gratefully (because he won’t have to perform a risky surgery) and admiringly (because he knows what hell that Al has been through), “God bless you, Al! Thank you for saving me!” From there the camera, positioned above Al’s bed, reverse zooms to show all the exhausted participants of the ordeal laying across Al in relief – a perfect symbol that Al is the center of their universe. What a pure moment of triumph, relief and joy that is, all wrapped together. I get choked up just thinking about it.

THIRD RUNNER-UP

Trixie (Paula Malcomson)
While not in the class of the above characters, Paula Malcomson’s Trixie is deserving of special recognition for being the most consistently complex character on the show. Whereas Al’s various nuances are slowly unraveled over the course of the series, allowing him to go from a seemingly one-dimensional man of violence who beats Trixie in the early episodes to a three-dimensional character who sings alone in his bar on talent night and consoles and rallies Alma near the series’ end, Trixie never really evolves. Sure, she goes from being a prostitute entirely beholden to Al to being a semi-learned woman of semi-respect who seems to have semi-control of her sexual relations with Sol. But for the most part Trixie is just as messed up at the end of the series as she is at the beginning, and that’s what I love about her. No doubt, if Deadwood would have continued for another two or three seasons, the writers would have brought more clarity to Trixie, but even with Trixie’s tearful embrace of Sol in the series finale her specific feelings are mostly a mystery. Does she love Sol and just struggle to admit it, to him or herself? Or, after all those years as a prostitute, is she hardwired to forever be under the thumb of a man – even if it’s the gentle thumb of Sol, who would gladly lift it to spare her the weight. Trixie has a toughness and ferocity that are entirely genuine, but she’s terribly insecure. I loved watching Malcomson play Trixie, in part because of her hard-edged beauty, which is becoming a rarity in TV and movies. But the main reason Trixie is listed here is because I never knew what to expect from her, probably because Trixie never knew what to expect from herself.

FOURTH RUNNER-UP

Dan (W. Earl Brown)
As has become clear already, Deadwood is a character drama defined by contrasts and contradictions, and no character illustrates that theme more clearly than W. Earl Brown’s Dan. On the one hand, Dan might be the most violent man in Deadwood. He may not kill as often as Al, but only because Al doesn’t give him the opportunity. Dan is fearless in battle, but he trembles when Al raises his voice at him. Essentially, Dan is Al’s beloved dog, ever faithful in following orders and always in need of positive reinforcement from his master. He’s capable of attacking anyone who walks onto Al’s porch, but in return he wants to be patted on the head and told that he matters.

Dan’s kind and yet cranky demeanor would have made him one of my favorite characters even if he hadn’t appeared in one of the series’ most unforgettable scenes, but since he did, it’s worth mentioning: The brawl between Dan and Hearst’s bodyguard, Captain Turner (Allan Graf), is prolonged and brutal, unfolding in an atmosphere that suggests that Dan might indeed die. When Dan plucks Captain Turner’s eyeball out of his head it’s as thrilling as it is gruesome. But the scene’s true power is found in the follow-up, in the nod of approval that Al gives to Dan, like the nod of an approving father, and the ensuing shots of Dan huddled alone in The Gem, coming to terms with ending another man’s life with his bare hands. If another character reacted this way, we might conclude that his oft-mentioned bloodlust was nothing more than empty posturing. But we don’t doubt Dan’s thirst for violence in the name of supporting Al, which is precisely why his intense emotional response after the brawl with Captain Turner is so unsettling.

FIFTH RUNNER-UP

Francis Wolcott (Garrett Dillahunt)
Garrett Dillahunt does something in Deadwood that must be unprecedented in a TV series: he commits the two most momentous murders in the show’s narrative as two different characters. Dillahunt’s first appearance on the show is in Season 1 as the stuttering, mouth-breathing Frank McCall, who is notable not just for shooting Wild Bill in the back of the head (the shot heard round the camp) but also for being on the receiving end of the most profane and unforgettable verbal assault in the show’s history (and for the very profane, very verbal and very assaultive Deadwood, that’s really saying something). Dillahunt’s more substantial appearance comes in Season 2, when he takes on the role of the buttoned-up, uptight advance scout for Hearst, Francis Wolcott, who in a way is also the front man for his more dangerous alter ego, “Mr. W.” Wolcott is a pleasure to watch because he’s a misfit. His comparatively elegant attire clashes with Deadwood’s muddy thoroughfare and grungy residents, while his air of restraint and propriety belies the uncontrollable killer inside him. Cinema and TV have given us so many varieties of psychopathic killers that it’s difficult to be excited by one anymore, and yet when “Mr. W” attacks the whores at Chez Ami it’s swift and shocking, even though he’s doing the very thing that has been foreshadowed and outright promised for several episodes. Watching Wolcott, I always struggled to tell whether he was more afraid of dangerous men or his own tendencies. Dillahunt’s performance suggests a man who under a disguise of unflappability is barely holding it together.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

After the six characters above, it becomes impossible for me to rank the actors in this next tier, so I provide them in alphabetical order by character name. (As any fan of the series knows, some of these characters are known by their first name, some by their last, and some by a mashup of the two. My alphabetizations are based on what I identify as the first character of their unofficial Deadwood handle.)

Charlie Utter (Dayton Callie)
Although Deadwood’s run came to an abrupt conclusion (all signs indicate that Milch closed out Deadwood’s third and final season under the assumption there would be a fourth), Dayton Callie’s Charlie is one of the characters whose unintended farewell dovetails nicely with his introduction. When we meet Charlie, he’s the faithful sidekick to Wild Bill, fretting over him like a mother, standing up for him like a brother and sometimes looking out for him like a spouse. One of my favorite lines in the entire series is early in Season 1, when Charlie approaches Seth and Sol and suggests they join him and Wild Bill for supper. Seth and Sol agree, and then Charlie breaks the awkwardness of the moment by playfully calling attention to it: “I feel like I shoulda brung posies,” he says. After Wild Bill is gunned down, Charlie is adrift. He tries to fret over Jane, but she won’t have it. He tries to stand up for Seth, but Seth doesn’t need it. All of which makes the following moment so rewarding: In the final episode, as Charlie sits holed up in The Gem, a place he loathes to step foot, he shared drinks with Dan, Adams and Johnny. He’s reluctant at first but gives in, eventually allowing a smile to cross his face as he realizes the guys he’s about to do battle with aren’t so bad after all. Charlie doesn’t become Al’s biggest fan in that moment, but finally he’s back in the warmth of camaraderie. Since Bill died, it’s the first time Charlie seems at home.

E.B. Farnum (William Sanderson)
It’s tempting to view William Sanderson’s E.B. Farnum as Deadwood’s comic relief, the bumbling innkeeper with delusions of grandeur whose specialty is getting on everyone’s nerves. Sure enough, the “shoo fly” relationship between Al and E.B. is one of the most consistently hilarious parts of the show. But E.B. (or just Farnum, both names are equal) is also key to the series’ analyses of power. E.B., after all, is the most powerful person in camp by title (he’s the self-appointed mayor), but he’s the weakest in reality (a self-proclaimed follower). More importantly, E.B. is the character who demonstrates the trickledown nature of authority. Although he sometimes willingly and other times begrudgingly accepts his place near the bottom of the Deadwood food chain, as a result he always makes sure to assert his dominance over the brainless Richardson, his hotel cook. Cruelty begets cruelty. Deadwood suggests that anyone with ambition is someone desperate for control.

Ellsworth (Jim Beaver)
Like Charlie Utter, Jim Beaver’s Ellsworth is another character whose exit dovetails with his entrance. Deadwood is filled with characters delivering rambling monologues to empty space or inanimate objects, but Ellsworth’s three such monologues are delivered to his faithful dog: the first one is early in the series and the last one is in the series’ penultimate episode, just before his shooting. The word that comes to mind when encountering Ellsworth is “genuine.” He’s genuinely kind and affectionate. He’s genuinely selfless. And whenever Hearst enters the conversation he’s genuinely enraged. He goes from a grungy loaner to a family man of privilege, and yet his demeanor truly never changes. It’s a testament to Beaver’s soulful portrayal that so much affection can be found in Ellsworth’s playful tradition of sticking out his tongue at Sofia, who seems to grasp that Ellsworth is the only one in camp who can look at her without first thinking of himself. In love or anger, Ellsworth is the real thing.

Hearst (Gerald McRaney)
With any TV series, I frequently find myself wondering what the series’ creators knew and when. For example, when did they know that George Hearst would feature so prominently? And when did they decide that he’d be the series’ ultimate villain? Maybe Hearst was in their plans all along. (True to history, George Hearst did own huge gold claims in the area.) But in so many ways, Hearst seems a direct response to what Cy Tolliver wasn’t (more on him later). Gerald McRaney’s performance is remarkably reserved, considering all the action and consequence applied to his character (and Deadwood’s tendency toward theatrics). His Hearst feels as well-traveled as the narrative suggests. There’s a patience to him, a complete confidence about him. He’s conquered towns like Deadwood before, so it never occurs to him that Deadwood won’t fall under his control. It’s only once things start going against Hearst’s plans that his blood boils and his need for immediate satisfaction overtakes him. Al Swearengen is a character in need of a formidable, fearsome opponent. He finds him in Hearst.

Merrick (Jeffrey Jones)
The thing that likely drew Merrick to Deadwood is the thing that makes him an outcast. While guys like Al, Cy and Hearst crave physical control, Merrick wants a different kind of power. He wants to be the camp’s trusted voice. By settling in a place that’s just beginning to settle itself and becoming its first newspaper man, Merrick achieves the role he desired, but he does so at the cost of surrounding himself by people who are more interested in the wealth they can find in the earth than in what’s happening above ground. Jeffrey Jones’ portrayal is full of all the awkwardness of a man of culture trying to ingratiate himself in a land of diggers and cons. When he and Al have their unforgettable “free gratis” exchange, any reader can’t help but identify with Al (why don’t you just say what you mean?) while any writer can’t help but identify with Merrick (that’s precisely what I’m doing, you fool). Merrick enters Deadwood with the idealism often embodied by young journalists. By the time the series ends, he hasn’t quite devolved into cynicism, but he’s been shaped by Deadwood more than he has shaped the town.

Reverend Smith (Ray McKinnon)
Oh, Reverend Smith. Poor Reverend Smith. Strong in his faith, surprisingly perceptive in his preaching and absolutely oblivious to the discomfort he creates in others, he’s both a loner and a clinger. Ray McKinnon’s performance is so convincing that it’s hard to imagine him breaking from character between takes. Reverend Smith’s halting delivery, unfocused eyes, confused head tilt and irrepressible smile make him an oddity even before his health begins to deteriorate. He seems to exist to invite the following question: Did searching for God make him crazy, or did craziness cause him to seek God? Despite the series’ obvious skepticism about religion (the only other man of the cloth in the series is a former con man who might also be a current con), Reverend Smith’s doomed determination to survive is treated with something close to reverence. After his first public seizure in The Gem, Reverend Smith goes with Doc Cochran to tend to those sick with small pox. “Are you sure you’re up to this?” Doc asks. “Oh, yes,” Reverend Smith replies, “I’m right where I’m supposed to be.” In that moment, we can already sense that Reverend Smith won’t be of this world much longer. And in his confident response, there’s an indication that he might know it, too.

THE EVER DEPENDABLES – MAJORS

This next tier is for those significant characters who were unfailingly consistent, always engaging and never detrimental to a scene, but who didn’t cast quite the spell of those listed above.

Adams (Titus Welliver)
What was it about Adams that I so enjoyed? I think much credit goes directly to Titus Welliver who has a presence and voice that I found welcome in any scene. But I also enjoyed the way Adams was a counterbalance to the rest of Al’s crew. Not so much in awe of Al, like Dan, Johnny or even E.B., Adams is simply respectful of him. He comes under Al’s employ out of strategy not blind allegiance. And while he isn’t above being the target of Al’s disdain, Adams is also the man whose opinion Al actually considers. When Al reluctantly agrees to let Adams send for Hawkeye, it’s a symbol of Al’s desperation, sure, but also of his trust in Adams.

Johnny (Sean Bridgers)
Why is it that some of the people least capable of handling responsibility are so determined to have some? Johnny is forever trying to earn Al’s respect, but he has a hard time doing it, mostly because he’s a fuck-up but also because Dan is self-interested enough to prevent Johnny from ever becoming too reliable in Al’s eyes. Johnny sure loves those canned peaches, and the nakedness of his efforts to impress are often as touching as they are hilarious.

Mrs. Garret/Ellsworth (Molly Parker)
Don’t mistake Alma Garret/Ellsworth’s placement here to be a disparagement of Molly Parker’s performance. Hardly. Parker deftly handles Alma’s shifts in and out of a laudanum haze, her bitchy streak, her longing and her awkwardly expressed affection. Alma presents a tough challenge because she swings from naïve overconfidence (underestimating Hearst, for example) to savvy “fake it til you make it” demonstrations of courage (walking amidst the thoroughfare after being shot at by one of Hearst’s thugs). Those would seem to be at odds with one another, but Parker makes them fit convincingly within the same woman. All that said, Alma’s place on this list is simply an acknowledgment that her character never so captivated me that I ever pained when the story left her.

Richardson (Ralph Richeson)
Richardson would love his place in this list, nestled up next to Alma Garret/Ellsworth. What I appreciate about Richardson is that he’s a simple-minded character who is faithfully simple-minded. Richardson is on the giving end of a few comedic moments over the series, but he’s never aware of it; there’s never a moment when Richardson is suddenly blessed with wit. He just carries on being Richardson, the show’s symbol of the average citizen, blissfully and yet tragically ignorant of most of the corruption in his immediate vicinity.

Sol Star (John Hawkes)
I was blown away by John Hawkes’ menacing performance as Tear Drop in last year’s Winter’s Bone without first seeing him here, so I can only imagine how stunned any original fans of Deadwood must have been. Quite the opposite of Tear Drop, Hawkes’ Sol Star is unfailingly good natured, kind and understanding. Anything but menacing. He’s an always welcome sight, but he’s placed here, in this lower tier, in deference to the more charismatic and influential characters listed above.

THE SADLY UNDERUSED

These are characters I think could have made a bigger impact on the show if only the narrative had given them the opportunity. They are characters who flashed brilliance only to fade away.

Miss Isringhausen (Sarah Paulson)
There are two character shifts in Deadwood that are so significant I have my doubts as to whether the writers planned them ahead of time. The most drastic of the two belongs to Sarah Paulson’s Miss Isringhausen, who enters the story as the prim and proper nanny to Sofia. There’s nothing about her manner that suggests she’s spying on Alma or trying to negatively manipulate her employer, but maybe that’s all part of the rope-a-dope. In ensuing episodes we learn that Isringhausen is adept at sizing up her mark and conning them to serve her interests. And she’s not shy about taking a victory lap either (poor Adams). She meets her match in Al, but who doesn’t? I wish Isringhausen had been given the chance to hang around Deadwood longer. I practically drool at the thought of Isringhausen being matched up against Trixie in a lengthy battle of fiery cunning.

Mrs. Bullock (Anna Gunn)
Just what does Mrs. Bullock think of her husband? It’s a minor mystery, but an unceasingly interesting one. I don’t object to the ambiguousness; I loved trying to read Anna Gunn’s expressions, which sometimes suggest disgust, and other times suggest apathetic acceptance, and other times suggest a frightened awareness. But I can’t be sure. Maybe Mrs. Bullock is simply staring at her husband trying to figure him out. Regardless, there’s a terrific scene in Season 2 when Mrs. Bullock takes offense at her husband’s implications that he’ll stay loyal to her, despite his obvious feelings for Alma. “I reject the offer,” she yells. “I repudiate it. I find it poisonous.” It’s a moment of raw energy, and I wish Gunn had been provided the opportunity for more of the same.

Tom Nuttall (Leon Rippy)
Leon Rippy’s Tom Nuttall, who mostly floats in the background throughout the series’ three seasons, would have been relegated to a tier below this one if not his bicycle. Tom’s excitement for that newfangled contraption, and the joyous spirit of his ride down the boardwalk, and the heartbreak he feels when his bicycle plays a role in the death of Mrs. Bullock’s son are among the series’ most indelible images. “My bi-cycle masters boardwalk and quagmire with aplomb,” Tom boasts proudly at his saloon. “Those who doubt me suck cock by choice.” Tom had too much potential to be forgotten along with his bicycle.

THE SADLY LOST (AND FOUND?)

Joanie Stubbs (Kim Dickens)
There were moments when Kim Dickens’ Joanie Stubbs was among my favorite characters, and moments when I cringed whenever she wandered into a scene. For the final quarter of Season 2 better part of Season 3, Joanie is a lost character. That’s by design, of course. Shaken by the slayings at the Chez Ami, which left her feeling guilty as well as confused for her future, Joanie becomes a shadow of her former self. And that’s fine. But the series steps too far when it makes Joanie afraid of her own shadow. There are moments when she frets over the camp’s children with no clear reason why. Joanie seems to find herself again in the Season 3 finale, but for too much of the season the series lets her spin her wheels, as if more uncertain about Joanie’s worth than she is.

THE CHARMER

Jewel (Geri Jewell)
You don’t need to be strictly politically correct to cringe when a handicapped person is made the butt of a joke because of those impairments. Indeed, there were multiple times when I cringed at Al’s treatment of Jewel. But over the broad view it’s clear that the series’ writers aren’t taking cheap shots for easy laughs. Rather, they’re using Jewel to further unravel Al, whose lack of sympathy for Jewel suggests, yes, insensitivity but also a kind of respect. Al never treats Jewel like a character who needs coddling, and thus the series doesn’t either. As it becomes clear that Jewel is an equal member of Al’s cadre, those cringes eventually turn to grins.

THE GRUNTERS

Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant)
My lone memory of 2007’s Live Free or Die Hard is how excruciating I found Timothy Olyphant’s acting. He wasn’t so much an over-the-top Lex Luthor as he was an over-acting WWE villain – Hulk Hogan in his bad-guy phase. Or so I remember. That said, it’s hard to imagine a better character for Olyphant to overplay than Seth Bullock, a slave to his immediate impulses whose hat and mustache do well to cast some shadows of nuance over Olyphant’s buck-naked histrionics. Make no mistake, Olyphant’s Bullock serves the series well. And his heartbreak over William’s death and clumsy-tender comforting of Mrs. Bullock over that span provide Olyphant with opportunities to show a bit of range. Still, over the long haul, Seth is one of the show’s least compelling characters.

Wu (Keone Young)
Like Olyphant’s Bullock, Keone Young’s Wu is exactly what the show wants him to be – a temperamental volcano of mostly indecipherable demands. It wasn’t so much Wu I enjoyed but Al’s impatience in dealing with him, coupled with his growing respect for him. Wu is, to Al’s ears and most of ours, a character of grunts, but the spirit of his message always comes through. And like Richardson above, the series never gives Wu a sudden burst of eloquence to suit a scene, with the glaring exception of the moment when Wu walks out of The Gem with his chest puffed out and says of himself, “Big man.” To the series’ credit, that’s one of the few times that the writers didn’t trust the actors to convey their message.

THE EVER DEPENDABLES – MINORS

This next tier is for those supporting characters who were unfailingly consistent, always engaging and never detrimental to a scene, but who had even less impact than the ever-dependable “majors” listed above. These are the characters who helped create the series’ atmosphere but were rarely (or never) significant players in its narrative or themes. They are listed here without additional comment.

Blazanov (Pasha D. Lychnikoff)

Con (Peter Jason)

Dolly (Ashleigh Kizer)

Eddie (Ricky Jay)

Leon (Larry Cedar)

Mose (Pruitt Taylor Vince)

Sofia (Bree Seanna Wall)

THE INCOMPLETES

This next tier is for those characters who still seemed to be defining themselves when the series ended (or when they existed the show), despite healthy amounts of screen time in some cases. Any one of them could have been on their way to being a memorable character, but they never quite came to fruition. They are listed here without additional comment.

Aunt Lou (Cleo King)

Jack Langrishe (Brian Cox)

Hugo Jarry (Stephen Tobolowsky)

Samuel “Nigger General” Fields (Farnklyn Ajaye)

Hostetler (Richard Grant)

William Bullock (Josh Eriksson)

THE JAR JAR

Calamity Jane (Robin Weigert)
While I was still early in Season 1, I tweeted that Robin Weigert’s Calamity Jane was Deadwood’s Jar Jar Binks, by which I meant she was irritating, overused and mostly unintelligible. There’s no question that she evolves over the course of the series, and it’s clear that she would have continued to do so. The writers were pacing themselves. But as much as I respect a show that treats alcoholism as a difficult and devastating disease, rather than some tick that can be easily overcome, most of the time Jane was on screen I felt that the writers found her much more entertaining than I did, which is always an empty feeling. Credit to Weigert: she never breaks character. But I grew tired of the numerous jokes about Jane breaking wind.

THE (SLIGHTLY SALVAGED) MISFIRE

Cy Tolliver (Powers Boothe)
The most interesting thing I learned from reading Alan Sepinwall’s recent series of “newbies” re-analyses of Deadwood’s first season is that Powers Boothe was originally cast as Al Swearengen, until some illness prevented him from taking the role. Once Al went to McShane, Milch created the part of Cy Tolliver to give Boothe a part to play. And play him he does. Over the course of the first season, and into the second, we watch Boothe put it into overdrive in the desperate attempt to seem as menacing as Al. But he never gets there, in part because Al is more dangerous half asleep than Cy is when broken out in full sweat. The series somewhat salvages Cy toward the end of Season 2, by putting him under the thumb of Hearst (via Wolcott), beginning to imply that Cy’s bite was never as damaging as his bark, but I’m doubtful that was the initial intent. To the show’s credit, the finale of Season 3 creates a renewed interest in Cy, making us wonder whether how he’ll operate in Season 4 as Hearst’s branch manager in Deadwood. Alas, Season 4 never came, and for most of the series Cy is just a growling loop.

THE WASTE OF TIME

Steve (Michael Harney)
I have absolutely no idea what the series’ writers thought they had in Steve, the insecure white dude whose dialogue is “nigger”-this and “nigger”-that up until the point that he’s kicked in the head by a horse and then can’t speak. Even catatonic, the writers fail to let go of his character. What on earth did they see in him? What irritates me about Steve aren’t the specifics of his language or even the repetitiveness of his character. It’s that Steve is the key character in a subplot involving Samuel “Nigger General” Fields and Hostetler that, to my eye, provide no depth to the show (I'm hoping Sepinwall found some depth here I'm missing). Were Fields and Hostetler token black characters, and thus was Steve the token racist? Other than acknowledging the existence of blacks and racists, I can’t think of a thing this subplot brought to the series. To think Steve was given more time in the spotlight than any of those “sadly underused” characters above is the show’s biggest failure.

All of that said, what a show! As painful as it was to reach the end, the richness of the characters and the complexity of the dialogue make certain that I’ll find a return trip to Deadwood just as thrilling as the initial journey. For now, I'm just going to sit back and soak in all that's happened.

There’s Something Inside Him: Drive

2011-09-18T21:13:00.001-04:00

Given that he wears a white jacket with a big gold scorpion embroidered on the back, and at one point alludes to the parable of the scorpion and the frog, it’s tempting to compare Ryan Gosling’s character in Drive to the clawed venomous arthropod he so clearly reveres. Yet the more I reflected on the film, the more Gosling’s character reminded me of a shark. He’s silent, dangerous and seemingly indifferent to the world around him. He’s streamlined, with a sharp nose and unrevealing eyes. He’s forever moving forward, as if he has no fear of what’s in front of him, as if he has no concept of what it would mean to stop. And underneath a sometimes docile exterior, he’s hardwired for violence, a toothpick dangling from his mouth as if ready to remove the flesh of his victims from his maw. It was only by thinking of Gosling’s character this way that I remembered the seemingly innocuous scene that explains him. Early in the film, Gosling’s unnamed character sits on a couch with the young son of his neighbor and watches cartoons. “Is he a good guy or a bad guy?” Gosling’s character asks in the direction of the TV. “A bad guy,” the boy answers without hesitation, “he’s a shark.” Gosling’s character chews on that analysis. “There are no good sharks?”

That’s the rhetorical question that unlocks this film. Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, Drive is a stylish throwback to Michael Mann’s Thief, with potent doses of Manhunter, Heat and Collateral mixed in. It’s a mood picture, frequently unfolding under the glow of the Los Angeles skyline (as eerily magical here as ever), or in romantically lit hallways and garages. One notable scene plays out in a strip club dressing room in front of topless dancers who sit statue-still in front of their makeup mirrors while a man is gruesomely beaten a few feet away, careful not to ruin the aesthetic by moving. The film’s soundtrack is a mix of earnest ‘80s-synth-inspired tunes and original pieces by Cliff Martinez (Solaris) that remind of the Tangerine Dream soundtrack for Thief and some of the Kronos Quartet pieces from Heat, respectively. Like many a Mann film, in particular Heat and Public Enemies, the sound design emphasizes the noise of violence, be it the firing of a gun, the slashing of a knife or, in one ill advised case, the slapping of a face. But for all the ways that Refn’s film stirs memories of Mann like a Quentin Tarantino picture evokes Sergio Leone, it lacks the same depth of character. Mann’s films, for all their style, are always powerful examinations of men wrestling with themselves; internal dramas brought to life through physical action. Drive nods in that direction, but it never commits, which is why Gosling’s character’s motivations are best understood only in retrospect. He’s profoundly unknowable.

I say that less in criticism than as a point of clarification. Drive, adapted by Hossein Amini from a book by James Sallis, is a spare novella compared to Mann’s melodramatic epics, in terms of both complexity and running time (100 minutes). Throughout, Gosling commands the screen as the unnamed stunt-driver-by-day/getaway-driver-by-night, part Frank Bullitt, part Travis Bickle, but he never approaches Thief’s Frank or Heat’s Neil, simply because the narrative is too one-dimensional to allow it. In a Mann film, Gosling’s “Driver” would be torn between his affections for his neighbor, Carey Mulligan’s Irene, and his addiction to his profession, his need to feel the rush of another job. In Drive, however, Gosling’s character’s illegal trade is the means by which he proves his affection to Irene, first by trying to help her husband pay back his debt, and then by trying to protect Irene and her son from retaliation. This subtle change in design, in which “Driver” is enabled to be the man he’s always been, robs the film of some dramatic conflict, turning “Driver” into little more than a drifter, consumed by the smell of blood in the water, to go back to the shark metaphor, but lacking any master plan. If not for Gosling’s irrepressible intensity and the Refn’s heavy-handed application of style, Drive would be an action film in the truest sense, because physical gestures would be just about all we’d have to hold on to.

Instead, Drive is a movie that finds whatever substance it has through its deliberate style, announcing its intent immediately through an opening titles sequence of slanted purple text that seems to allude to Purple Rain, Miami Vice and, yep, Thief, all at once. Drive isn’t set in the ‘80s, to be clear, it just finds its personality there, though with his scorpion jacket and leather gloves Gosling’s character does seem injected from some other era. Instead of a backstory, he has an aura, evoked through the icy confidence of his gaze, the tightness of his jaw and the rumbling of a car engine. As his lack of a name suggests, “Driver” identifies with his trade. That’s his essence. Which helps explain why he often seems spiritless when not behind the wheel. His early interactions with Irene drift from subtly sexually charged to awkward, and I’m not sure the latter is always by design. More than once Refn seems to be pulling a Sofia Coppola, hoping that by holding a shot long enough a sense of consequence might come through. It works sometimes, but there are moments in which Gosling and Mulligan, capable actors both, seem to be waiting for Refn to call “cut.”

Mulligan is criminally underused; with no part to play, she smiles and touches her lips. Christina Hendricks has even less to work with. They do their jobs just by showing up. Spectacularly miscast, however, is Albert Brooks, whose mafia-type heavy is neither terrifying nor funny, just Albert Brooksy. No matter how many times Refn shoots Brooks from below and no matter how well his character wields a blade, Brooks only postures toughness, never oozes it, and considering all the violence assigned to his character via the narrative, that’s damning. Still, such shortcomings matter little because Drive isn’t a character picture. Refn is in it for atmosphere, and in its best moments Drive’s tension and coiled rage vibrate off the screen like roaring car engine. Its action sequences are gripping, and its fight scenes often graphic (though not without restraint). And while Refn’s car chases could stand to include an establishing shot or two to give us a sense of the geography, each turn of the wheel seems filled with consequence; nothing cheap.

Drive is one of those films that comes to the precipice of greatness so many times that its failure to take the leap can be distracting. But approached according to its own intentions, it’s a thing to admire. Fittingly, watching Drive is not unlike driving at night with the radio pumping: we are in the world and removed from it, sitting still but moving, focused on the journey and lost in the music. Gosling takes from the main character all that there is to be found, contributing graceful swagger and sex appeal to what so easily could have been nothing more than maniacal wrath. There’s a moment past the midway point of the film in which his character looks at Mulligan’s Irene with a mixture of self-awareness and confusion. It’s the expression of a man who knows he’s a shark and wonders if he can be a good one. I understand that now. Before, I simply felt it.

Come On, Everybody! Clap Your Hands!: The Help

2011-09-17T21:49:00.002-04:00

The villain in The Help, a film that one way or another is about racial inequality in the American South circa 1963, is a young woman of means named Hilly Holbrook. Played by the fare-skinned, redheaded Bryce Dallas Howard, Hilly is raging racist and an equal opportunity bigot. She refuses to share a toilet with her black maid. She shuns her ex-boyfriend’s wife for being white trash. And when Hilly’s mother dares to laugh in her direction, Hilly ships Mom off to an old-folks home as punishment. Hilly is a bitch to the extreme, and a monster, too. And so when Hilly gets into her car and speeds over to the house of the film’s free-thinking, compassionate white heroine in order to confront and threaten her, you might expect that Hilly’s journey would be accompanied by an ominous tune in the spirit of the “Imperial March.” Instead, the music on the soundtrack is Chubby Checker’s “Let’s Twist Again,” joyfully upbeat and playful. If you want a clue as to the spirit with which writer-director Tate Taylor approaches his material, based on a novel by Kathryn Stockett, look no further. The Help never avoids that there is evil in this world, but at no point does it allow a shadow of despair to ruin its sunny, redemptive outlook.

Given the film’s setting and subject matter, this is a precarious position from which to operate, and, not surprisingly, The Help has been the target of scorn from those who feel it overly sanitizes the very hatred it’s attempting to rebuke. In a wide-ranging condemnation of both the film and the novel, The Association of Black Women Historians point out that for all of Hilly’s unblinking villainy, The Help suggests the grimmest hardships a black woman encountered in the Jim Crow South were tongue-lashings, humiliation and potential unemployment – not physical and often sexual abuse, or even death. Indeed, the Ku Klux Klan is never even name-dropped in The Help, and the white men of the town are largely absent or passive. On the flipside, however, the film’s supporters can’t help but notice that, sanitized though The Help may be, there’s no doubt about its stance against hatred in general and racism specifically. And while the ABWH suggests that the film “reveals a contemporary nostalgia for the days when a black woman could only hope to clean the White House rather than reside in it,” in fact the opposite is true. The Help makes it clear that, contrary to the myth, the "Mammy" had more in common with the plantation cotton picker than with Alice on The Brady Bunch, thus mostly demystifying the old stereotype. What's really at issue, then, is whether it’s acceptable for a dramatic film to portray the Jim Crow South and have a good time doing it.

It's a question with no easy answer. To make a blanket rule against it would be simple-minded, and indeed many smart comedies make their hay by taking on sensitive subjects with verve (think South Park). But dramas are different (even when they’re quasi-comedies). Attack the subject matter with the thirst for misery often typified by Lars von Trier and a filmmaker risks alienating the potential audience. Sprinkle marshmallows into the cereal bowl and the filmmaker risks offending those who think the subject matter is too severe, too adult, too important to be dished out with any hint of sweetness. The Holocaust and America's shameful history of dehumanization and abuse of blacks (among other non-whites) are two subjects that usually get approached with caution for good reason. But despite the reservations of the ABWH, The Help is less reflective of our feelings and collective memory of America’s embarrassing past than it is reflective of our life-affirming present. Although The Help isn’t technically attached to the culture icon, it’s straight outta the church of Oprah Winfrey: female focused, preaching personal control of one's fate, praising dignity amidst despair and implying that evil can be overcome simply by confronting it, all while refusing to recognize that not everyone who does the right thing is blessed with good fortune.

The central (white) character of this film is Emma Stone’s Skeeter. She’s smart, ambitious and curious about the world around her. She’s composed, brave and compassionate. She’s independent, career-driven, indifferent to men and clueless about what used to be called “women’s work,” namely cooking and cleaning. Skeeter is then, simply put, a role model for these times, and thus she’s a symbol of the kind of person we hope we would’ve been if we’d grown up in those times. By transporting a modern worldview into the past like Marty McFly leaping back to 1955, Skeeter isn’t a reflection of the Jim Crow South but our tour guide through it. She allows us to roll our eyes at Hilly’s hateful histrionics, which even in light of our not entirely harmonious present seem as outdated as the belief that the world is flat. And Skeeter takes us behind the service curtain into the lives of the black “help,” so that we might all feel, even slightly, the depth and breadth of the gulf that existed between these two worlds, despite any outward appearance of integration.

It’s in this latter world that we meet the two characters who provide the film’s heart and soul, Viola Davis’ Aibileen and Octavia Spencer’s Minny. Black maids both, Aibileen and Minny respond to their mistreatment in opposing ways: Aibileen internalizes and endures, while Minny lashes out. Like Skeeter, they are each modern role models in their own right: Aibileen is a portrait of composure, while Minny fights for the rights she deserves, damn the consequences. Their actions don’t always reflect historical reality, but, rightly or wrongly, they’re not meant to. The Help has been criticized as a film designed to make white people feel better about themselves (making X-rated horror into a G-rated cartoon and inviting white folk to pat themselves on the back for having less in common with Hilly than with Yosemite Sam), but the truth is that The Help is designed to be wish fulfilment for all of us. The scene in which Minny enacts her scatological revenge on Hilly is sophomoric to begin with and overlong to boot (by the time it’s worn out its welcome it’s only halfway through), and, yeah, it’s historically dubious, but it serves the same functional purpose as the scene in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds in which Hitler’s head is practically blown off his shoulders by machinegun fire: it confirms our modern desire to see haters and harmers receive their just due.

Where The Help is truly objectionable isn’t when it fails to portray our shameful history but when it accidentally reflects it. In a flashback late in the film we watch as Skeeter’s mom, Charlotte (Allison Janney), fires their long-time maid and de facto nanny Constantine (Cicely Tyson) rather than treat her like a member of the family in front of the community’s white establishment. The scene is designed to make Charlotte into a villain, albeit momentarily, and to make painfully clear that black maids in the Jim Crow South were always expendable accessories, never actual family members – and indeed the scene accomplishes all of that. And yet when Constantine is pulled away from the front porch by her daughter and looks back through the screen door at Charlotte with a longing, heartbroken and utterly confused expression on her face, it’s hard to ignore the way the composition equates Constantine to a family dog – blind in her loyalty and confused by the complexities of human interactions. The Help doesn’t mean to offend here, or anywhere, but such is the inherent problem of simplifying a complex (and sensitive) subject.

Thus it’s of no surprise that the film’s proudest moment is problematic, too. When Aibileen stands up to oppression and accepts unemployment over further degradation, our hearts swell with pride even while our heads tell us that Aibileen should be looking over her shoulder for the KKK on her walk home; yet, again, The Help is about confirming our morals in the present more so than it’s about staying true to the past. Davis infuses Aibileen with so much strength and hard-earned dignity that it’s virtually impossible not to cheer her triumph, historically problematic though it is. Dramatically speaking, The Help would have been better off allowing Aibileen’s moment of bravery to have the spotlight for itself, but instead Tate hands out similar episodes of victory and redemption like Oprah giving away cars: “You get a moment of triumph! And you get a moment of triumph! And you get a moment of triumph!” By the end of the picture, only Hilly is left to hate. Then again, if you’re going to engage in wish fulfilment, why not go all the way? For better and worse, when it comes to feeling good, The Help simply can’t help itself.

Infamous & Elusive: The True Story of Jesse James

2011-09-06T12:00:00.008-04:00

The following is my contribution to the Nicholas Ray blogathon, hosted by Tony Dayoub at Cinema Viewfinder.

Nicholas Ray’s examination of notorious outlaw Jesse James opens with a bang. The setting is Northfield, Minnesota, circa 1876, and the James Gang is in the midst of the proverbial One Last Job. From an initial shot of a tranquil thoroughfare, the action announces itself with the sound of offscreen gunfire and the sight of a Northfield citizen scrambling for safety crying, “It’s a hold-up!” Over the next frenzied minute, the gunfire seems to come from all angles – from men on horseback and balconies – the editing deliberately amplifying the chaos through rapid shifts in perspective. As Jesse and his brother Frank ride out of town, the shootout ends as suddenly as it began, but the intensity of the opening doesn’t cease. In the next scene we find an agitated lawman giving orders to the town’s telegraph operator. “Tell ‘em to round up every man with a gun and head them off,” the sheriff barks, not yet knowing who he's after. It’s then that another man informs the sheriff that one of the robbers was named Jesse. “Tell ‘em it was the James boys,” the sheriff says, turning back to the telegraph operator with even more urgency than before. “Tell ‘em he’s 400 miles from his own stamping grounds. Tell ‘em it’s a chance of a lifetime to get Jesse James!” In this opening pre-credits sequence, through the excitement of the gunfight, the intensity of the sheriff’s orders and the wide-eyed interest of on-looking townfolk, Ray conveys that Jesse James is more than an outlaw. He’s a celebrity and the subject of fascination. And he’s as elusive as a ghost.

So just who was Jesse James? As the title suggest, that’s what the rest of 1957’s The True Story of Jesse James is all about. But from the outset it’s clear that there will be no simple answer to that question. Prior to the gunfight, a title card suggests that James was both a symbol of and a product of the Civil War – a “curious mixture” of good and evil. The screenplay by Nunnally Johnson and Walter Newman revisits Jesse’s life through the perspectives of those who knew him, or only thought they did, both confronting and entertaining the various myths about the man. Ray’s means of transitioning in and out of these recollections is corny at best – dissolves to and from pink-hued clouds meant to mark the leap back in time and suggest the fogginess of memory – but the Rashomon-esque narrative design adds multidimensionality to what is a fairly flat performance by Robert Wagner as Jesse (more on that in a bit). In the eyes of his mother, Jesse is the victim of crimes perpetrated against him by northerners. In the eyes of his wife, Jesse is a committed family man who acts ruthlessly only out of devotion. In the eyes of the public, Jesse is the action-figure of pulp adventure stories, whether playing Robin Hood or wearing the black hat. To his own brother, Frank (Jeffrey Hunter), Jesse is a man who loses perspective and control, letting his violent streak drive his ambitions. In our eyes, watching the flashbacks leading up to the Northfield hold-up and the present-tense shots of Jesse on the run, he’s all of these things. And yet for all his mysteriousness and complexity, Jesse isn’t very compelling.

In Ray’s film, Jesse isn’t ambiguous so much as he’s indistinct. He’s the focal point of the story, and he appears in most of the scenes, and yet he blends into the background with surprising regularity. Most of the blame can be stuck on Wagner, who simply isn’t as dynamic as numerous of Ray’s other leading men, from Humphrey Bogart (In a Lonely Place) to James Dean (Rebel Without a Cause) to Charlton Heston (55 Days at Peking), no matter how often Wagner scowls with madness or tilts his head with arrogance. But Ray doesn’t do Wagner many favors. The True Story of Jesse James is practically void of close-ups or other singles that might evoke Jesse’s stature, and thus Jesse is often lost within Ray’s detailed CinemaScope compositions. Case in point: In the scene in which Jesse first urges his friends to help him rob a bank, and in doing so establishes the James Gang itself and him as its leader, Wagner is placed at the far left edge of the frame, where he is partially obscured by the wide shoulders of Alan Hale Jr’s Cole Youger in the foreground, and he’s dressed in a gray sweater that makes him blend in with the shadows of the barn where the scene takes place. Based on the composition alone, Jesse appears smaller than and subservient to his brother Frank, who sits closer to the camera and at the center of the shot (and wears a more striking red shirt). And yet the dialogue makes it clear that the scene is about Jesse’s emergence and influence. It’s a visual and tonal contradiction.

Curiously, despite numerous tantrums and physical threats throughout the picture, Jesse will never be a more charismatic and imposing presence than at the point his reign comes to an end. There’s a tremendous scene near the finale in which Jesse finds his son and daughter playing outside, with brother standing over sister, pinning her down with a toy gun. “I shot her,” the boy says, “we’re playing Jesse James.” As Jesse gathers his daughter off the ground, Wagner flashes an expression of bewilderment, as if Jesse is shocked and saddened to find that his notorious legend has crept up onto the steps of his own household and into his son’s imagination. Together, the three of them then head back toward their tranquil home through a white picket fence, a perfect portrait of domesticity, even getting a friendly hello from a passer-by, who calls Jesse by his alias, Mr. Howard. It’s through this scene that Ray best summarizes his titular character’s contradictory identities: notorious killer outlaw Jesse James at one end, and clean-cut family man Mr. Howard at the other.

Is the “real” man lost in the middle, or is Jesse bipolar? If Ray has an opinion, he never makes it explicit. But he does repeatedly suggest that the diverging opinions of Jesse are each accurate in their own way. It’s notable that inside the James/Howard home there are two framed embroideries on the wall: one reads “Home Sweet Home,” the other “Hard Work Spells Success.” It’s this second framed embroidery that Jesse is reaching for on the wall when, as in the beginning of the film, a peaceful tableau is shattered by the sound of offscreen gunfire, this time as Robert Ford shoots Jesse from behind with his own gun, and Jesse proves unable to elude the legend that he worked so hard to establish. The True Story of Jesse James doesn’t rank among Ray’s best pictures, but by showing a man struggling to survive a war he’s waging against himself, it does remind of them.

Everyone Needs a Damn, Dirty Hand to Hold On To: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

2011-08-21T16:11:00.000-04:00

As the man behind the movements of Gollum and King Kong, Andy Serkis is undoubtedly the most famous motion-capture actor in Hollywood. Of course, that’s a lot like being the most famous stuntman; if Serkis and digital animators do their jobs, it should seem to the audience as if he was never there. Over the years, Serkis has appeared sans digital “costume” in numerous films, including King Kong (where in addition to the gorilla he was also Lumpy the cook) and The Prestige, but, like Anthony Daniels before him, playing high profile characters hasn’t led to a high profile. Many are the moviegoers who could imitate Gollum but not recognize the man behind the shriveled figure if he sat beside them at the local multiplex. Not that Serkis seems to mind. Asked in a recent episode of NPR’s Fresh Air whether his agent ever pressures him to take more live-action roles, Serkis said he didn’t draw a distinction between the two styles of acting. “They’re just characters to me,” he said. “The only caveat is: Is it a good story, is it a good character?”

In Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the answers to those questions are “Yes” and “Yes,” but only as they apply to Serkis’ Caesar. A chimpanzee whose intelligence has been chemically enhanced, Caesar is the most perspicacious character on screen, whether he’s in the play area at the rescue center where he orchestrates a primate revolt or somewhere else in San Francisco, where he is unceasingly surrounded by mouth-breathing humans. Screenwriters Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver have created a story that allows a mostly nonspeaking ape to evoke his cunning and emotions through the careful CGI-enhanced mannerisms of Serkis and the thoughtful direction of Rupert Wyatt, but they have left the humans around Caesar so void of nuance that it often feels as if they are being played by actors weighed down by inflexible rubber suits. That’s the good and the bad of it. For all the summer movies that spend an inordinate amount of screen time on CGI spectaculars that are stapled to the film’s edges like flowers on a parade float (the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels have been particular offenders in this regard), Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a partial antidote. It is never more emotionally or intellectually relevant than when it’s digitally driven.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is the prequel to the 1968 Charlton Heston vehicle and the sequels and re-imaginings the original inspired. In a cinema landscape increasingly filled by reboots and redos (to say nothing of barely concealed ripoffs), the franchise origin story prequel is perhaps the perfect marriage of profit-minded brand familiarity and audience-serving artistic license (not that it helped George Lucas). Although the endpoint is defined, screenwriters and directors (should) have ultimate creative flexibility in regard to getting there. Planet of the Apes (1968) is particularly ripe for this prequel treatment because the otherworldliness of its premise was the core ingredient of its now famous “Holy shit!” conclusion. And as much fun as it is to watch a man trying to survive in a seemingly alien planet of advanced ape civilization, it’s an equally intriguing exercise to see how this world becomes that one. While a mysterious chemical reaction – the sci-fi writer’s Get Out of Jail Free card – is a core ingredient of this origin story, Jaffa and Silver have grounded their tale in human greed, big pharma and the white superiority complex, which is enough to make Rise of the Planet of the Apes fall somewhere between electrifyingly plausible and hauntingly inevitable (though admittedly far closer to the former).

Even by the end of this picture, the apes haven’t taken over Earth, but they already seem more advanced than their human counterparts. James Franco’s Will Rodman, the scientist who raises Caesar, exists mostly to spout plot exposition, usually spelling out what we can tell just by watching: principally that Caesar is smarter than the average bear, chimp and even human his age. That said, Will comes in handy when it’s time to convey Caesar’s desire to reject his human upbringing. Caesar’s revolt is motivated in part by the trauma of being abandoned at the rescue center and being abused by one of the caretakers there, but mostly Caesar responds to his evolving awareness that he’ll always be a second-class citizen in human society. (No matter how many times Will insists that Caesar isn’t a pet, the leash he keeps handy says otherwise.) Caesar is simply in search of a place where he belongs, and he spends most of the movie adrift. Early on, he gazes through the circular window in his attic bedroom at Will’s house, growing excited by the outside world and wanting to interact with it. Later, after being left at the rescue center, Caesar draws that same window on his cell wall and longingly presses his forehead against it, wishing he were back in the warmth of the only home he ever knew. When, later still, Caesar sponges that window sketch from his cell wall, it doesn’t signal a comfort within ape society so much as his growing acceptance that he can never return to the place he came from.

These themes of disorientation, loneliness and aimlessness translate so well because they are typical to the human experience. Caesar is a stand-in for any adolescent who must figure out who he is in order to figure out where he belongs, and who finds his voice in the process. At times, Wyatt’s film feels less like a prequel in the gravitational pull of the 1968 original than like a typical coming-of-age story enacted by an ape. Rise of the Planet of the Apes alludes to its cinematic pedigree throughout but it exists independently of that franchise, standing assuredly on its two feet. Given that the film leaves off with the apes having simply liberated themselves from bondage, there could be room for another film or two between this and Planet of the Apes, if someone wanted to fill out the franchise in detail. But for those prequel sequels to match the – admittedly inconsistent – power of this picture, they would need to remain fixated on Caesar’s emotional journey, more closely resembling Michael Corleone’s descent into power-crazed madness than Jurassic Park. Alas, big-budget, CGI-dominated series don’t have a great track record in this regard. So for now we can simply appreciate that Rise of the Planet of the Apes exhibits something that so many effects-driven films lack: a human touch.

The Conversations: Jaws

2011-08-19T15:17:00.001-04:00

Just in time (sort of) for the end of the summer blockbuster season, The Conversations series continues with a look at Jaws. Steven Spielberg's wide-release 1975 smash is widely considered to be the first summer blockbuster, but how much does it have in common with the modern blockbuster? That's just one of the topics covered in this latest installment, which also includes appreciation for Spielberg's direction, John Williams' score and the performances of Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw and even "Bruce" the mechanical great white shark. It was a fun movie to revisit and to discuss, so head on over to The House Next Door and join the conversation.

Click here for an archive of The Conversations.

Remember Hogwarts: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

2011-08-01T19:09:00.001-04:00

It’s of little surprise that as the Harry Potter franchise has evolved over a decade and eight films it has become almost customary, when discussing the series at any length, for reviewers to reflect on the effect of watching the series’ three principal stars growing up before our eyes. Indeed, actors Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint haven’t simply added 10 years, they’ve gone from not-quite (or in Grint’s case just-barely) teens to legitimate young adults, and their characters, Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, have mostly matured in kind, along with the series’ themes. (Not to mention that when those of us unfamiliar with J.K. Rowling’s novels found ourselves befuddled by bludgers and beaters, the slow transformation of the series’ heroes from wide-eyed sprites into rugged adventurers became safe ground – something we all understood.) One might think then, with all this talk of growing up, that it wouldn’t be a shock to arrive at the final film of the series and realize how much Hogwarts has aged, but as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 opens the de-evolution of the school of magic packs a wallop. In the opening shots, new headmaster Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) watches from above as students march through the courtyard with military uniformity and purpose – a Nazi-esque image that was impossible to imagine amidst the Disney-esque enchantment of the first film. The once fanciful castle of possibility is now a dim, grim prison of hopelessness. And before long, it becomes a fortress for war.

If you’re searching for clues as to why the wand-blasting action of this final installment is more powerful and exhilarating than in any of the previous films combined, look no further. One of the series’ weaknesses has always been the ambiguity of all the spell-casting. The limits of these sorcerers, whether young or old, good or evil, has never been made clear, and all too often it’s seemed as if the only way to win a wand duel is to catch one’s opponent napping, given that each bolt of hocus pocus has the curious habit of perfectly neutralizing another. All these movies later, I still don’t understand how much credit goes to the wizard or the wand, and it’s always puzzled me that Harry, the chosen one, seems in constant need of protection from a fight. (I always pictured Harry as closer to Superman than Frodo Baggins, but maybe I’ve had that wrong.) Having said that, one thing all of us can understand without a PhD in Rowling is what it means to fall back on one’s last line of defense. As noted by Hokahey, in this grand finale Hogwarts becomes the Alamo – a fitting comparison not only because Voldemort and his almost limitless henchmen descend upon the castle like Santa Anna and his army, but also because Hogwarts was in its own way, like the Alamo, a place of worship before it became a stronghold. Many of us may not grasp whether Voldemort is growing stronger or weaker, whether Harry & Co are on the verge of victory or defeat, or what it actually means to destroy a horcrux. But it’s universally understood that if Voldemort seizes control of Hogwarts, he wins not just the battle but the entire war.

So it is that Hogwarts becomes the most significant character of the finale, featuring prominently in many of the film’s best scenes, which also include some of the series’ most convincing and thoughtful CGI. There’s an awesome moment in which a hoard of snatchers scurries over the ground like an army of ants, narrowing to almost single-file in order to invade Hogwarts through its long covered pedestrian bridge, while in pursuit of the courageous Neville Longbottom (Matthew Lewis). Just before that there’s a terrific sequence that begins with a bird’s-eye view of Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) walking through the parted ranks of his army to a hilltop overlooking Hogwarts and ends, after the camera swoops out over the valley, with a tight close-up of Voldemort’s memorable noseless face. And before both of those there’s a thrilling sequence in which the Hogwarts elders band together and point their wands toward the sky to create a protective dome of light over the castle while, under the command of Professor McGonagall (Maggie Smith), warrior statues come to life and assemble at the school’s front gate to challenge whatever is on the way. Alexandre Desplat’s score nimbly shifts from mournfulness to adventurousness throughout the film, but it’s never better than in this preparation sequence, when it captures the epic consequence of the imminent battle and by doing so conjures the gravity of emotion that so many non-readers have struggled to find in the series. Whereas so many epic CGI battles are waged by an endless supply of insignificant pawns on irrelevant territory (think: The Lord of the Rings trilogy), this final grand clash in the Harry Potter series is waged by mostly familiar characters on decidedly sacred ground, and that makes all the difference.

None of this is to imply that Deathly Hallows 2 doesn’t have some of the same old problems of its predecessors. For starters, even with screenwriter Steve Kloves and director David Yates assuming that we understand the crux of the horcrux quest, the finale can’t ditch the breathless yet cryptic plot exposition that has defined the series. Meanwhile, the film’s moments of romance are clumsily inserted. And its one-liners are silly without pleasing. And there are too many scenes in which poor Hermione and Ron can do nothing more than stand behind Harry with their arms at their sides and Very Concerned expressions on their faces. And some of the tasks that are prefaced by a lot of handwringing are resolved effortlessly. (“I can’t,” Hermione says when Ron tells her she needs to destroy the last horcrux. But Ron insists she must. And then she does. And, well, that wasn’t so hard, was it?) And yet the finale also provides another dose of some of the series’ greatest pleasures, like the way Rickman’s dramatic-as-ever Snape makes “hour” a two syllable word, and the way Fiennes’ Voldemort extends a wand delicately between his index and middle fingers as if his evil spells are enhanced by a feather-light touch, and the warmth with which Hermione hugs Harry, and so on. Late in the film, when Harry washes his face in the giant contact lens in Dumbledore’s old office and gazes back into the past, I couldn’t help but admire the way that Yates could insert a character’s significant backstory into the plot without halting the narrative’s momentum. It’s things like these that have been too easy to take for granted.

Although I have re-watched small parts of the Harry Potter series here and there on TV in recent years (mainly to remind myself of all that’s happened), Deathly Hallows 2 is the only film in the series I’ve seen twice in full. The return trip was necessitated in part by the strengths I’ve mentioned above, but also by the pleasure of seeing the film in a packed theater of adoring fans. I’ve never been deeply moved by this series, but the sniffles I heard during both screenings was a tribute to how much the series has meant to others, particularly those who devoured every word of Rowling’s books and then relived the experience at the multiplex (as I’ve said before, these films work best as video scrapbooks for Rowling’s readers). If there were two films left in this series, I might take issue with the odd suggestion from Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) that Harry should “pity the living,” wondering where that mentality fits within the series. But now that it’s come to an end, I find myself tuned into the finale’s strengths rather than its weaknesses. Like its star character, the Harry Potter series needed to meet its end in order to become transcendent. And while an awkward 19-years-later postscript was enough to remind me how much I don’t want to head back to the beginning, here at the end I’m sorry to see the series go.*

* (Of course, it's possible I'm on a high from watching the Quidditch field burn to the ground.)

Looking Closer at Rear Window

2011-07-07T13:00:00.102-04:00

Sometimes you watch a movie you know by heart and see it as if for the first time. That’s what happened for me last weekend when I was fortunate enough to catch Rear Window on the big screen at the AFI Silver. Prior to Sunday’s show, I’d seen Rear Window, gosh, at least eight times (excluding partial viewings caught while flipping through the channels). It’s a film I know well enough that I could easily sketch L.B. “Jeff” Jeffries’ view of the courtyard or recite several lines of dialogue. But on the big screen it felt new. I could easily ramble on about the so many things I love about the film, but for now let me point out just a few – in particular things that stuck out for me from my big-screen experience.

Need I say this? Spoilers ahead!

Hitchcock’s Non-Cut Close-Ups
I’ve written before about Hitchcock’s carefully considered close-ups in Psycho, and those are on display here, too. But whereas Hitchcock mostly arrives at close-ups via straight cuts in Rear Window, there are two notable sequences in which he gets to his close-up cut-free.

The first occurs in the scene just after Lisa (the more beautiful each time Grace Kelly) has argued away the possibility that Jeff (Jimmy Stewart) has witnessed the aftermath of a murder.

She finishes her lecture ...

And as soon as she does, she spots something out the window ...

It's Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr) packing a large trunk in the bedroom of his apartment, where the mattress is curiously stripped and rolled up behind him.

It takes only that visual for Lisa to believe Jeff’s murder theory, and in one lovely little zoom she gazes out the window and says: “Let’s start at the beginning again, Jeff. Tell me everything you saw, and what you think it means.”*

*Listen carefully and you'll hear the sound of the cameraman’s footsteps on the floorboards as he moves the camera closer to Kelly.

In that context, the zoom has two commingling effects: first, it symbolizes an awakening (Lisa’s realization that something sinister did happen in the apartment across the way); second, it emphasizes the drama/gravity of Lisa’s implied accusation.

That shot is a joy all by itself – one of my favorite moments in the entire picture – but what’s even better about it is that it sets up another moment later on, almost a half-hour later.

This scene involves Jeff’s detective friend Tom Doyle (Wendell Corey).

Like Lisa, Tom has demonstrated an initial reluctance to believe Jeff’s theories. After doing some off-camera investigating he’s now in Jeff’s apartment to provide, Jeff assumes, more evidence to corroborate his theory. Seemingly of the same mind now, Jeff and Lisa tell Tom that the woman witnessed leaving the apartment with Thorwald couldn’t have been Mrs. Thorwald because she left her jewelry behind; something Lisa suggests a woman going away would never do. Tom listens patiently, stirring his brandy.

“Now come on, Tom, you don’t really need any of this information, do you?” Jeff says. Tom puts down his drink: “As a matter of fact I don’t.”

Tom now walks into a close-up, creating the effect of the zoom we saw earlier.

Like Lisa earlier, Tom is staring out across the courtyard toward Thorwald’s apartment. Like Lisa, we’re certain, Tom now sees the light. And then he says, “Lars Thorwald is no more a murderer than I am.”

Of all the shocking moments in Rear Window, and there are a handful, this is the most brilliant. Tom doesn't raise his voice, and he hadn't actually said anything that would suggest he now believed Jeff. But by mirroring the effect of Lisa’s zoom, Hitchcock primes us to believe the result will be the same. And when he suggests Thorwald is innocent, it leads us to feel, well, like this … stunned.

The Toast
Because this is a movie about, in one way or another, voyeurism, and because it’s Jeff who is constantly being lectured about the impropriety at best and dangerousness at worst of spying on one’s neighbors, it’s easy to forget that there’s a scene in which Jeff actually feels awkward for his spying (not that it stops him).

It’s the scene in which he watches Miss Lonelyhearts prepare a dinner for two in an apartment of one.

As Miss Lonelyhearts pantomimes the act of being on a date, Jeff watches, and at one point glances over his shoulder to see if Lisa is watching him watching.

Jeff’s relative bashfulness evokes the sadness of Miss Lonelyhearts’ fantasy. He chuckles while watching her, but he isn’t proud of it. Jeff seems to detect that he’s watching something deeply personal. He’s seeing into Miss Lonelyhearts’ lonely heart, and that makes him uncomfortable. It makes him feel for her, too.

And when Miss Lonelyhearts raises her glass in an imaginary toast, Jeff toasts back, a touching gesture that suggests Jeff is capable of seeing these people as more than action figures playing out dramas for his amusement.

The Sirens
Rear Window is full of ambient noise, from the piano playing of the musician to the sound of kids playing in the street across the way. But it’s no mistake that when Hitchcock gives us a scene of Thorwald fighting with his wife, their words are obscured by sirens. (I know you can't hear the sirens by looking at this picture, so use your imagination.)

Foreshadowing? You betcha.

Let's see, what else do I love about Rear Window

This Face

That Look

But you knew that. Echoing a recent observation by Craig Simpson, there are few movies deserving of the word “perfect,” but Rear Window is one of them.

As I basked in the glory of it on the big screen, I was on the lookout for something that I’d change if given the opportunity. I came up with just one minuscule thing: In the sequence that begins with the woman finding her dead dog, then lecturing her neighbors, Hitchcock closes things out with a shot of Thorwald’s apartment: dark except for the burning embers of his cigarette.

I wish Hitch had held that shot two seconds longer. That’s it. That’s my change.

I love Rear Window. More than ever.

Stiff as Rearden Metal: Atlas Shrugged: Part I

2011-07-04T13:22:00.000-04:00

Few novels have ever given me greater enjoyment than Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. And, yes, that says as much about me as it says about the novel – but doesn’t it always? I first encountered Rand’s 1957 opus, along with The Fountainhead, when I was in college, reading it for fun, intrigued mostly by its length and narrative subject matter, with only a hint of interest in its underlying philosophy. I’m smarter now, more aware, but I wasn’t stupid then. Atlas Shrugged didn’t win me over by romanticizing my worldview. It hooked me through a story that’s packed with melodrama, mystery, discovery, betrayal and passion. It enchanted me with its epic imagery: decaying cities and a mountainous utopia; westward trains and a lone figure hiding in the shadows. It tantalized me with characters who desperately try to adhere to their own moral codes, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, regardless of the toll. Objectivism? It was a factor in as much as it affected how the characters behaved. And while Rand may have intended otherwise, I never felt the novel demanded my obedience – not even when John Galt delivers his ideological speech that lasts 55 pages, although admittedly I only skimmed that part. I loved reading Atlas Shrugged because it’s a good yarn, full of action, dialogue and evocative settings. I loved it, in other words, because reading it felt a lot like watching a movie.

That’s why it’s too bad that the film version is paper thin. Adapted for the screen by John Aglialoro (also the film’s producer) and Brian Patrick O’Toole, and directed by TV actor Paul Johansson, who also appropriately plays Galt, mysteriously pulling the strings from the shadows, Atlas Shrugged: Part I is inept in almost every way a movie can be. The acting is flat and tone deaf: although Taylor Schilling has a cold allure that makes her often robotic delivery somewhat appropriate for the often frosty and always calculating Dagny Taggert, Grant Bowler (as Hank Rearden) and Matthew Marsden (as James Taggert) give the oversized yet underwhelming performances that you’d expect to find in a low budget soap opera pilot. Speaking of low budget, many of the sets are unconvincingly fabricated: the walls of mighty Rearden Steel look as if they’d topple over if you leaned against them, and scenes inside the Taggerts’ polished-wood offices are dominated by a hollow ambient hum that made me think of a Brock Landers flick. Which brings us to the sound design: in one scene in which Dagny’s assistant stands mostly still in the background, we can hear his dress shirt gently rustling against his suit; nuff said. To go on would be to belabor the point. Johansson’s film is so inert and frequently cheap looking that it’s impossible to take seriously, which makes either embracing or rejecting it based on its underlying philosophies a foolish exercise. Not that it’s kept people from doing just that.

When I saw the film more than two months ago, I was 10 minutes away from the theater when I read via Twitter that Aglialoro had caved in the face of overwhelmingly negative reviews and decided not to finance the final two films of the series. Just this week, however, with Part I set for release on DVD, Aglialoro confirmed that the next two installments are indeed slated for production, with the release of Part II strategically timed for 2012, in the hope that it will strike a chord with an increasingly dissatisfied electorate. A common thread in much of the discussion around the film thus far is the misguided implication that the quality of the film itself has anything to do with the value of its message or the nobility (or lack thereof) of its source material. No doubt, Rand’s philosophies could have something to do with the film’s profit margin, which hinges on the ability to lure a target demographic, but the film’s failure as art and its performance at the box office neither validate nor invalidate Rand’s novel as a work of literature or the ideologies that are embedded within it. (Plenty of lousy movies have been made from great novels, and vice versa.) Which leads me here: Those who have only read of Rand’s novels might be surprised to learn how unobtrusive those ideologies can be within her fictional narratives. In that respect Johansson’s film is quite faithful to its source. Does Part I reflect the values of Objectivism? Undoubtedly. But like Rand’s novel – that repetitive 55-page speech aside – Johansson’s film actually isn’t an endless parade of soap-box-perched characters spouting Objectivist philosophy. And just like it’s possible to revel in the twisted ethics of the Corleones without treating The Godfather saga like a religious text, so we can also dabble in Rand’s Objectivist drug recreationally, without becoming addicts.

Of course, you’d actually have to read Atlas Shrugged to know that, and I suspect that many critics of Objectivism haven’t bothered. Film fans should know as well as anyone that sometimes the most inaccurate descriptions of a piece of art come from its creator and/or its most ardent supporters, and that rule applies to Atlas Shrugged. Without Rand there to describe it, the narrative is capable of nuance. It leaves room for ambiguity. It gives us characters we can admire, despise, sympathize with and pity in equal measure. Just because Rand, like so many artists, might have intended a universal meaning or effect doesn’t mean our response needs to be so rigid. From Michael Corleone to Daniel Plainview to Anton Chigurh, from T.E. Lawrence to Timothy Treadwell to Jesus Christ, and so on, some of the most fascinating characters are those who go to extremes for their beliefs – sometimes with difficulty and sometimes with ease, sometimes for good and sometimes for ill. To see Atlas Shrugged only through the filter of its narrow Objectivist following as an ideological exercise is to limit its ability to be universally compelling as human drama. (Furthermore, critics of Objectivism often overlook that many of the selfish acts of the characters in Atlas Shrugged either create a public good or sidestep corruption, even if those weren’t the motivators for action. Not to mention that many of these characters demonstrate a very basic selfishness that fairly reflects the way most of us go about our lives. But that’s a discussion for another day.)

All of that said, what’s particularly disappointing about this film is that it fails to capture the momentous tone of the novel in a way that can stoke the ideological fires of its target audience or keep its non-Objectivist audience intrigued. There’s one terrific shot in the film in which Rearden watches the first batch of Rearden Metal being turned into train rail – his gaze intense, his conviction palpable – but the rest of the picture is an emotional flat line. The affair between Rearden and Dagny is especially bungled, as it lacks the very thing that makes it so compelling in the book: the collision of their intense desire not to need someone else against their equally intense need for intimacy with one another. Instead of a Dangerous Liaisons-esque internal tug-of-war between yearning and individualistic ego, Johansson’s film gives us a guy in a loveless marriage banging the hot chick who appreciates his genius – ho-hum. Critics of Rand’s novels (never mind her philosophies) often point to the ordinariness of her prose, her clumsy description of action, her overuse of archetypal characters, her penchant for melodrama and her inability to use any tool other than a sledgehammer to drive home her points. But make no mistake, Rand had vision. What any adaptation of her work requires is a similar cinematic vision, and the conviction of Rand’s heroes to never cut corners. It needs a filmmaker who can turn the laying of the John Galt Line into something with the frontier romanticism of Days of Heaven, rather than the staid imagery of nightly news B-roll. By investing millions of his own fortune to get these movies made, Aglialoro has demonstrated his respect for Rand’s work. But in doing so he launched a series with the myopic vision of a follower.

The Conversations: Terrence Malick - Part II

2011-06-23T07:00:00.003-04:00

If you haven't seen The Tree of Life, this post isn't for you. Oh, please, bookmark it. But don't read it. The Conversations: Terrence Malick - Part II is full of spoilers. But, more significantly, it's full of interpretation, and you owe it to yourself to try to grapple with The Tree of Life on your own; it's a movie for grappling, and it's about grappling, really. That said, those who have seen The Tree of Life are encouraged to head on over to The House Next Door and continue the discussion -- whether that's today or next week or next month, depending on when the movie gets to you. Whether you think Malick's fifth film is his masterpiece, or an erratic failure that crumbles under the weight of its ambition, it's certainly Malick's most debate-ready picture -- open to all kinds of interpretation. We got some great comments on Part I of this discussion, and I hope we see more of that here. So, when you're ready, give it a read, and let us know what we missed.

Click here for an archive of The Conversations.

Touched For the Very First Time: X-Men: First Class

2011-06-22T19:46:00.000-04:00

Superhero movies are like orgies. Get enough extreme people in the room and suddenly the miraculous becomes mundane. By that description, X-Men First Class is an orgy full of virgins. Matthew Vaughn’s film traces the Marvel comic franchise to its roots – back when Professor Charles Xavier was just a cocky grad student, Magneto couldn’t levitate anything much bigger than a car battery and Mystique went by the equally stripperish name of Raven. Novices who barely understand their powers, never mind what it takes to harness them, these characters are special but not quite super, noble but not quite heroic or misguided but not quite villainous. They are mutants who are all too human, and that’s precisely what makes them interesting. The dirty little secret of comic book movies is that the stronger superheroes become, the more they tend to bore; pit two formidable opponents against one another and what you get, more often than not, is lots of thrusting, grunting, panting and a sense that each participant is trying to put off the climax for as long as possible. X-Men First Class, in contrast, is one of the rare superhero movies populated by characters who are more concerned with ultimate conquest than with foreplay.

Or so it seems to me. Admittedly, I know comic books only slightly better than I know orgies, so maybe this is an Ironman hangover talking. Nevertheless, it’s refreshing to come across some superhero/villain fight scenes that don’t seem to be motivated by style points. Considering that this is a prequel, it takes some incredible suspension of disbelief to convince ourselves that these comic book icons are in any grave danger, but at least when these budding X-Men mix it up they seem as likely to hurt themselves as their opponents. There’s no suspense to be found by watching to see if they survive, but there’s intrigue to be had in watching to see how they survive. X-Men First Class can’t completely escape serving up fight scenes that come off like choreographed dance routines – it doesn’t help that whenever Azazel and Riptide strut out onto the battlefield wearing designer suits and come-hither stares they seem as likely to break out into West Side Story’s gym mambo as to throw down – but it successfully keeps its characters out of rhythm. Where so many superhero movies try to impress with excellence, X-Men First Class finds fashion in awkwardness.

Carrying most of the weight in this effort is one of the most graceful actors working today, Michael Fassbender. Taking on the role filled by Ian McKellen in the narratively subsequent films, Fassbender plays Magneto, or, more correctly, he plays Erik Lehnsherr who becomes Magneto. (Spoiler warning?) Magneto is the Darth Vader of the X-Men franchise: a one-time agent for good whose path to ultimate villainy is inspired by vengeance – retribution for the slaying of his mother. In one of the film’s key scenes, it’s Erik/Magneto who urges his fellow mutants to take the fight to the evil Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) in the name of those who have died at the villain’s hands. “We can avenge them,” Erik says, and it sounds heroic, but his words are tinged with rage. Whereas other mutants sprout dragonfly wings or grow blue fur, Erik’s metamorphosis into Magneto is emotional rather than physical, and yet Fassbender externalizes it beautifully through his mad eyes and tightened jaw. His good-natured chemistry opposite James McAvoy’s Charles Xavier is equally convincing, which makes Erik’s ultimate descent into fury a genuine bummer. The Erik/Charles relationship is everything that George Lucas wanted the Anakin/Obi Wan relationship to be but failed to achieve. Their bond is so convincing that when Erik turns his back on Charles it plays like a shock, even if it’s the moment we’ve been waiting for all along.

Credit Vaughn for treating the action in this film as if it isn’t a foregone conclusion, and for creating a tone that’s harmoniously edgy and irreverent. Erik’s outbursts of violence are unflinchingly dark and cruel, and yet more often than not the film is light and playful; some of the mod sets are just this side of Austin Powers, as is some of the dialogue, and Vaughn further establishes a swinging 1960s vibe with a groovy split-screen montage. When X-Men First Class embraces and celebrates its status as the retro precursor for all that is to come, it’s a pleasant summer trifle. But when it tries to be meaningful, it’s a chore. To call the mutants’ frequent rants about their lack of societal acceptance “metaphoric” would be to falsely suggest their complaints are dramatically compelling within the margins of the narrative. Part of the problem is that these mutants complain about an ostracism we never actually see: Angel is supposedly tortured by her physical appearance, and yet she’s a stripper, volunteering herself to be ogled; Raven feels like an outsider because she’s naturally blue skinned, but she gets through the day by transforming herself to look like Jennifer Lawrence (and eventually Rebecca Romijn), which can’t be too rough; Hank McCoy, until he becomes the Muppet-like Beast, suffers from ugly feet, and thus works side-by-side with a non-mutant who doesn’t have a clue about his unusualness; and so on. I respect that the mutants’ sense of otherness is part of the franchise’s DNA, but X-Men First Class never makes their alienation more than words. The tone of their tortured testimonials seems to equate their private suffering with closeted homosexuality, but in practice these mutants come off like naturally gifted jugglers or trapeze artists bitching because life isn’t a circus designed for their enjoyment. It’s the mutant equivalent of the Twitter hashtag #firstworldproblems.

Superhero movies thrive on creation and discovery, origin stories and evolutions. The most compelling characters are the ones whose limits are easily understood. Superman can do about anything, but he’s undone by Kryptonite. Batman has a bad attitude and badass toys, but underneath the suit he’s just a regular dude. And so on. Genuine drama can’t be found without clearly understood vulnerability. After watching X-Men First Class, I couldn’t begin to tell you what Beast’s limitations are, or Mystique’s or Havok’s, but Magneto’s glaring weakness is obvious: he cannot let go. Whether that leads to his eventual undoing in one of the subsequent stories that’s already been filmed, I don’t know. (I saw one or two of the original X-Men flicks, but I don’t remember them.) As far as this film is concerned, it’s enough that Magneto’s vulnerability, which is alive even in his moments of incredible power and destruction, makes him compelling. In “future” X-Men incarnations, Magneto will take on the world. In this film, he battles himself.

Mint!: Super 8

2011-06-19T17:19:00.001-04:00

When I was in elementary school, my friend’s older brother, who was in middle school at the time but seemed to me to be about 23, wrote a screenplay. All I remember about the script is that it was (1) written on college ruled paper; (2) starred a character named Maximilian; and (3) involved a scene in which a bunch of kids, including Max, threw flowerpots down from a rooftop at the story’s adult villains, who might have been Russians, but who knows. Come to think of it, that might be all I ever knew about the screenplay, which at 100-or-so pages struck me as something that would take months to read, which is why I happily settled for descriptions. My friend was certain his big brother’s script would be made into a movie, and so was I. After all, the script had a main character with a cool name and kids throwing flowerpots at bad guys. What else could it possibly need? (And did I mention it was written on college ruled paper? This was serious stuff!) To my mind, it was only a matter of time before cameras came into our neighborhood to shoot the big flowerpot scene. My only uncertainty was whether I’d be in it.

Cut to today: J.J. Abrams’ Super 8 tells the story of kids growing up in a similar period and with a similar fascination with movies. Super 8 is being called Abrams’ homage to Steven Spielberg (who is the film’s executive producer), and with good reason: the film itself recalls some of Spielberg’s early pictures, particularly E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Jaws, and Super 8’s kid-made film within a film, The Case, reminds of those 8 mm homemade movies Spielberg made growing up in Arizona. But to me Super 8’s throwback appeal is broader than that, and to focus on Spielberg’s influence is to miss the bigger picture. Abrams’ film is set in 1979 but it’s of the 1980s, a period in which Hollywood regularly gave us movies about kids triumphing in the face of very adult danger. Just off the top of my head, we had E.T. (1982), War Games (1983), The NeverEnding Story (1984), Cloak & Dagger (1984), The Goonies (1985), Explorers (1985), Flight of the Navigator (1986), Space Camp (1986) and Russkies (1987). (Honorable mention to 1983’s The Outsiders and 1986’s Stand By Me, which pit kids against kids, and 1984’s Red Dawn, which is about teenagers.) These are movies I grew up on or around (I’ve actually never seen Space Camp or Russkies, though it feels as if I have). These are movies that made me feel like I didn’t have to grow up to be a hero. And these are the kinds of movies I miss discovering on summer afternoons – although I didn’t realize how much until I saw Super 8.

So while it’s only right to attribute some of the effect to nostalgia, I struggle to think of a time in the past 10 years when I’ve enjoyed a “Summer Movie” quite this much, perhaps because Super 8 looks and feels like the movies of my childhood summers, which weren’t dominated by comic book superheroes or digital effects, as they are today. (Aside: I saw the trailer for Transformers: Dark of the Moon yesterday, and I’m still amazed that fans of that series can tell the difference between the “good bots” and the “bad bots” – apart from the bright yellow Bumblebee – during the never-ending fight scenes; although maybe they can’t, and maybe that says everything about the way summer movies have changed over the years from plot/character-driven adventures to noise spectacles in which what is happening doesn’t seem to matter so long as something is.) Two of the best things that Super 8 has going for it are a sense of place and a sense of space. The Ohio town is just small enough that the sheriff’s deputy can know everyone by name and just big enough that its kids can find unsupervised corners in which to make mischief. Everything seems a bike ride away. And while so many of the film’s episodes are borrowed from early Spielberg films, which often borrowed from 1950s monster movies, they unfold with such patience and sincerity that it’s as if they’re new. The train crash; the encounter with the monster at the gas station; the encounter with the monster along an empty highway; and so on: these are self-standing moments of adventure and/or suspense, not perfunctory demonstrations of special-effects outrageousness. Abrams’ film isn’t without excess (the train crash, in particular, carries on until it becomes ridiculous), but the tail never wags the dog.

What Super 8 does best though is capture the mixture of ambition, naïveté, insecurity, cheer and general naked emotionality of childhood. The main character is Joel Courtney’s Joe Lamb, an only child whose mother died in an accident four months prior. Joe consistently clutches to a locket that used to belong to his mom, a clear symbol of how much he misses her even while he cavorts with his friends as if nothing has changed. So many adult dramas would ascribe adult emotions to Joe, making him withdrawn, sullen and bitter. But Abrams, who wrote the screenplay, apparently realizes that kids aren’t like that. More often than not, kids respond to trauma as Joe does: coping in public and clinging to their sorrow and uncertainty until alone in the safety of their bedrooms. Joe never breaks down into a puddle of tears, and he doesn’t need to. His loneliness is palpable. The same could be said for Alice Dainard, Joe’s budding love interest, who has only her alcoholic father to look after her. Alice is played by Elle Fanning in what I’m certain will go down as one of the best supporting performances of the year. She’s tremendous. Alice is slightly more mature than the boys around her and yet too young to realize what power she has over them. In one terrific scene, Alice rehearses for one of the scenes in The Case and turns in a performance so convincing that it leaves the boys with gaping mouths, but Abrams never forgets that girls often have this effect on boys. Sometimes all they need to do is put up their hair or stand within arm’s length.

Super 8 is best early on because it spends time observing the kids as kids and allows those scenes to breathe. In the final third of the film, things get messy: the monster’s motives and actions are unclear and magnetic effect of his whatever is inconsistent. But big deal. The giant CGI beasty is the MacGuffin, nothing more, and it’s not often we get to say that anymore. Abrams deserves credit for being judicious with his creature shots – and, relatively speaking, he’s actually somewhat reserved with his trademark lens flares, too, although it’s particularly annoying when he allows a giant blue streak to cross the screen when the light source causing it isn’t even within the frame). Super 8 may not rival the best of Spielberg, but it’s far more rewarding than the worst of him. It’s the kind of movie we once thought M. Night Shyamalan would serve up with regularity but hasn’t. Truth is, no one has. Fairly late in Super 8, after the quiet Ohio town has become a war zone, there’s a terrific crane shot that captures the boys from above, running through yards amidst house fires, military tanks and explosions. The shot is so extreme that I was just about to roll my eyes at it, until I remembered my youth. That shot is exactly the kind of adventure I imagined myself in all the time and exactly the kind of scene I would have reenacted with friends. No one throws a flowerpot in Super 8, but Abrams throws the kitchen sink. Good enough.

The Conversations: Terrence Malick - Part I

2011-05-28T22:29:00.000-04:00

Everyone is talking about Tree of Life. Well, everyone who lives in New York or Los Angeles or made it to Cannes. The rest of you can get your fix by heading over to The House Next Door for Part I of The Conversations: Terrence Malick, in which Ed Howard and I discuss his first four pictures: Badlands (1973), Days of Heaven (1978), The Thin Red Line (1998) and The New World (2005). We discuss Malick's affection for nature, his use of narrators and his implementation of music. We also discuss whether Malick's pictures are "too pretty." So give it a read, and let us know what we missed.

Click here for an archive of The Conversations.

Gee, Wally: The Beaver

2011-05-23T21:42:00.000-04:00

In Jodie Foster’s latest film, a beaver gets multiple close-ups, but it’s the elephant in the room that dominates our attention. Mel Gibson’s turbulent private life, so sordid that even those of us who are thoroughly uninterested know all the basics, thoroughly colors his performance as Walter Black, a depressed businessman who goes from the top of a balcony ledge to the top of the business world by forming a relationship with a mangy beaver puppet that he pulls out of a trash bin. Incredibly, I suspect that’s the way Foster wants it. The screenplay for The Beaver was written by Kyle Killen, and yet the entire project feels as if it was manufactured with the rehabilitation of Gibson’s image as the mission statement. Throughout the picture, Gibson is asked to play one of three emotions: suicidal; socially anxious; and playful, and he does them while wearing a cuddly beaver puppet on his left hand. In theory, it’s the perfect blueprint for building sympathy for the troubled star, loosely suggesting that all of Gibson’s outrageous behavior is a sign of how much he’s hurting on the inside, while also allowing him enough room to flash his movie-star charm. But it never comes to form, because The Beaver is incapable of standing on its own two (four? six?) feet.

Indeed, if The Beaver is about something other than the rehabilitation of Gibson’s image, what is it about? (Big spoilers ahead.) Walter’s character arc goes like this: he’s depressed; he tries to kill himself; he begins living his life through a puppet alter ego and in doing so finds happiness, inner peace and business success; he is judged for his eccentricities and, unable to cope without his puppet, does physical harm to himself, landing in a mental health institution. Read that one more time and riddle me this: What’s the takeaway? So far as I can tell, there isn’t one, unless you consider this a cautionary tale about the risks of saving one’s sanity via insane means. Trouble is, that doesn’t quite work, because as pitiful as Walter is at the end of the film, he’s in better shape than when the film begins. In essence, Walter trades a piece of himself and his dignity for a shot at happiness, and it works. It’s a net gain, which makes Walter’s story not so cautionary after all. Additionally perplexing is the subplot involving Walter’s eldest son, Porter (Anton Yelchin), who falls for the valedictorian (Jennifer Lawrence); invades her privacy; gets them both arrested; writes her graduation speech; watches her find her own voice; and then finds a place in his heart for his psycho dad. Never mind that the pieces of Porter’s story don’t have anything to do with Walter’s journey, I don’t think they have much to do with each other either.

That’s why The Beaver feels like nothing more than an empty observation of oddity. Alas, it even disappoints in that respect, too, because Foster is unwilling or unable to treat its wacky scenario slightly realistically. For example, when Walter goes into work and appoints his beaver puppet the new CEO of his toy company, his employees snicker and wrinkle their noses in reactions that are one part “WTF?!” but also one part “Oh, look at the cute little beaver!” Although cautious, Walter’s employees are remarkably trusting of his extreme behavior to a degree that suggests that they need to have their mental health examined, too. Killen attempts to work around this point by having Walter reintroduce himself to people by handing them a card explaining that the puppet is a doctor-prescribed way to help Walter cope with the world’s horrors, but even if that were true it would still be alarming. The Beaver never acknowledges that admissions of insanity are discomforting (not the other way around), probably because that would work against its Walter-as-victim structure. Other than Porter, who rolls his eyes at everything his father does, the only person who takes genuine exception to the beaver is Walter’s wife, Meredith (Foster), who repeatedly has enthusiastic sex with her husband and his beaver – context is important in this sentence – but objects when he shows the furry thing in public at the dinner to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary. You’d think it would be the other way around, but never mind. The point is that The Beaver wants Walter’s self-inflicted wounds to be graphically real but not the awkwardness that his trauma creates.

For these reasons and more, The Beaver isn’t nearly as powerful as another film about a broken man bonding with an inanimate object, 2007’s Lars and the Real Girl, which has double the humor and double the tragedy of this film precisely because it commits to its scenario so completely, putting as much care into chronicling the effect of the main character’s fantasy on others (and building a situation in which it seems plausible that they would enable that fantasy in the first place) as it puts into examining the core relationship between the real guy and his blow-up sex doll girlfriend. The only thing that The Beaver portrays with such accuracy is the media feeding frenzy that celebrates Walter’s eccentric behavior in order to lure him onto an examining table so they can pick him apart. In this climate of Charlie Sheen as truth torpedoer and Donald Trump as presidential material, Walter’s story never seems more realistic than when Foster gives us a shot of a newsstand in which Walter and the beaver smile at us from each and every magazine cover.

Make no mistake, Gibson can act. And if The Beaver had any bite, and if Gibson had a different history, this would be the kind of movie that Academy Awards pundits might drool over, because, gasp, Gibson plays two characters at the same time! He even fights with himself (in a scene that shows how impossibly stupid the origin story of Fight Club is, but never mind). Oscar! Oscar! Or maybe not. Because if Gibson had a different history, The Beaver wouldn’t be interesting at all. As it is, when Foster isn’t on the screen portraying Deep Concern (which involves titling her head to the side and occasionally speaking like she’s hyperventilating), she’s got her camera staring into Mel’s dark eyes, which are set inside that weathered face, which frequently wears a hangdog expression that says, “I’m a miserable human being.” It’s a wonder Foster doesn’t play the violin, too. She wants so desperately for us to see the humanity inside Gibson, and while I don’t think she succeeds, I readily admit that searching for Gibson’s soul is a lot more compelling than searching for Walter’s. Although in both cases, I’m not sure there’s anything to find.

My “Movie”

2011-05-13T18:05:00.009-04:00

“What’s your movie?” That’s the way he first asked the question. Or at least that’s the way I first heard it. I was standing in the living room of Keith Uhlich, editor of The House Next Door, and his partner of 10 years, Dan Callahan. More specifically, I was standing in a circle with Odie Henderson, Sheila O’Malley, Steven Santos and Steven Boone, each of them bloggers in their own right who, at one time or another, in one way or another, also contributed to The House Next Door. We’d been standing in that circle for a while at that point, just one of many conversational shapes that formed over the course of that afternoon, evening and night. I couldn’t tell you what time it was, only that by that point I’d been upstairs and downstairs, in this corner and that one, with these fellow movie geeks and others, and it was dark outside. Many revelers had now been gone for as long as they’d attended. A few who remained were quite drunk – just not anyone in this circle. No, when Steven Boone halted our mostly scattered chitchat to ask us a group question, he was stone cold sober, and so was I.

That’s why I’m surprised I didn’t immediately understand what Boone was getting at. His question sounded to me like a fairly banal “What’s your desert island movie?” sort of inquiry. I don’t pretend to know Boone all that well, but by that point of the night (and, heck, even before it began) I knew him well enough that it shouldn’t have taken retrospect to realize that Boone was the last guy to be interested in something so pedestrian. And yet the question went over my head, maybe because I stopped listening before he finished asking it. As the person immediately to Boone’s right, I was up first, and so I gave an answer that I’ve given many times before in similar situations: Rear Window. It’s one of my favorite fallbacks (along with On the Waterfront), not necessarily because it’s true but because it isn’t altogether untrue, and mostly because it’s a simple answer that always gets an understanding nod from the person who asked it, whether that person is a teenage blockbuster watcher who has only heard of Rear Window or a pretentious film snob who is likely to answer that question by mentioning the most unknown work of Norway’s best auteur. It’s a safe answer, and, not incidentally, a fairly accurate one – Rear Window is a movie I indeed love, admire and cherish. The problem is that Rear Window wasn’t the answer to Boone’s question. I just didn’t realize that yet.

The coin would drop a few seconds later, just after Odie, to my right, and thus second in the batting order, prompted Boone to clarify. What Boone really wanted to know might be better summarized this way: “What movie is you?” But even that’s oversimplified, because it could be misinterpreted as, “Which movie resembles your biography?” Boone’s intent was deeper than that. What he was getting at is which movie best reflects who we are and how we feel – which movie best reflects and touches our soul. Or something like that. The truth is, there was room for interpretation, but in that moment the four other people standing there knew right where Boone wanted us to go. If I remembered exactly how Boone rephrased his question, I’d quote it now, but to be honest I don’t think that would help. It was the way Boone asked the question that really resonated, at one point extending his arm and open hand into the center of the circle as if he was going to reach into our chests – because that’s where the answer was. Somewhere inside us.

This was profound stuff, but it sounded to me like an easier question to answer, because this was no longer an analytical exercise, nor was it a matter of taste. It was a question of the soul. The answer should have been right there, somewhere between the gut and the heart, just waiting to come out. With everyone on the same page, now all eyes shifted back to me so I could modify my response, but the answer didn’t come to me immediately, so I requested to go last. Odie was now up again and he answered quickly, so quickly that I almost didn’t hear him. Of course, that might be because in my own head a voice was screaming, “Fuck, what’s my answer?!”

So many different movies came to mind, each of them appropriate in their own way. Was my answer as simple as Star Wars, the movie that first made me love movies? Considering how much movies mean to me, that seemed a fair answer, but that wasn’t quite it. So, was it The New World, the Terrence Malick film that only a few days before had rendered me breathless yet again? Maybe, but somehow it didn’t feel personal enough – deeply moving but not me. So maybe my answer was something like Field of Dreams, a movie that taps into so many things that are essential to who I am, among them a love of my father and baseball and a belief in things magical. But, well, even that movie wasn’t quite right, because it’s about a guy trying to come to peace with a fractured relationship with his father, and my dad and I have never been estranged. So maybe my answer was something more obscure, something like My Life, a movie that I don’t regard as great but that has a strange power over me and a special place in my heart? I just didn’t know.

There were too many choices. I’d think of a film made within the past 10 years and it would seem too recent, as if by choosing it I would be suggesting that before that movie came along I had no cinematic soul. My selection had to come from early on, I decided. It had to be something that I loved now as much as when I discovered it, and something that shaped who I am and who I still want to be, and thus something that reflects why I fell in love with movies in the first place and why they cast such a spell on me. Instantly, a movie came to mind.

But I still wasn’t positive. And thankfully it wasn’t my turn. Shelia answered. Santos answered. Boone answered. I listened to them all. I won’t repeat their answers here because, as you might imagine, the “what” wasn’t the important part; it was the “why,” and I couldn’t do their descriptions justice. As my turn approached, I was leaning a certain direction, but my head was still swirling as to what I’d say. (“You’re thinking to much,” Odie told me. You think so?!) Thankfully, right about then, Kurt Osenlund came within reach. Kurt’s a Philadelphia-based critic planning to relocate to New York in the next few months. When the party started, I didn’t know him, but already we’d talked enough that he seemed like an old friend, especially now. I threw my arm around Kurt, invited him into the conversation and strategically put him to my left, buying myself a little more time. Kurt got brought up to speed and then, effortlessly, came up with an eloquently expressed answer. I might have hated him for that, except his answer unlocked mine. Kurt picked a miniseries, not a movie, and in doing so enabled me to broaden my options. Finally, I knew my answer. It was right there – right between my gut and my heart.

I didn’t pick a movie. I picked a TV show. Actually, I picked a specific episode of a TV show: the Harry Belafonte-hosted episode of The Muppet Show from Season 3. I picked it because, until Kurt broke away from the movie format, I was considering answering with The Muppet Movie. I picked it because I grew up on the Muppets as much as I grew up on Star Wars, and because today I love The Muppet Show in general, and that episode specifically, even more than when I first discovered it. I picked it because I think that no one acted alongside Muppets better than Belafonte. (“That’s a big statement,” Odie noted, as if I’d tripped his hyperbole alarm. But I stand by it.) I picked that episode because, as I was telling Boone and Santos earlier that night, the creature shops of Jim Henson and George Lucas were intrinsic to my early appreciation of cinema as imaginative craft. I picked that episode because it has two of the cutest sketches in the show’s history – the performance of “The Banana Boat Song” and the drum-off with Animal – and one of the most powerful, the closing number: “Turn the World Around.”

It’s that last number that really gets to me, and to respect its effect you have to realize a few things. First, you have to realize that, as far as I can tell, “Turn the World Around” is the only closing number in the history of The Muppet Show to play throughout the closing credits. One of the joys of The Muppet Show is that in the closing number the hosts always sang, from Linda Ronstadt to Sylvester Stallone. But those songs always ended before the credits, giving way to Kermit, who would take the stage, thank the host and kick it to the orchestra for the closing theme music, which always paused just long enough for those cherished final putdowns from Statler and Waldorf in the balcony. This episode is different. Belafonte sings “Turn the World Around,” accompanied by some African-themed Muppets, and then he’s joined on stage by the show’s recognizable cast of characters – Kermit, Fozzie, Rowlf, etc. – enthusiastically singing the chorus. Kermit thanks Belafonte, as usual, but the rest of them don’t stop singing. They keep singing all the way to the end, all the way to the shot of Statler and Waldorf in the balcony. Only this time there are no cutting remarks, because they’re singing, too.

In that respect alone, that performance is special. But there’s also this: Although Belafonte recorded the song on a 1977 album of same name, throughout the late ‘80s and ‘90s it was almost impossible to find. While “The Banana Boat Song” was Belafonte’s signature, “Turn the World Around” became iconic to The Muppet Show. When Jim Henson died in 1990, Belafonte performed the song at his memorial service, choking back tears. You can find the memorial service performance on YouTube, and the original episode, too. Of course you can. Today everything is on YouTube, or DVD, or iTunes, whatever. But for the longest time it wasn’t. For most of my life, my exposure to The Muppet Show came in precious glimpses, stumbling upon it on some buried cable station at some obscure time, often there for a month or two and then gone just as quickly. But over the years I never forgot that song, that episode, that performance. It was always right there, right between my gut and my heart.

On February 9, 1995, I saw Belafonte in concert. I remember the date because it was my 18th birthday. On that day, that exact day, Belafonte was in my hometown of Eugene, Oregon – population of less than 140,000. It seemed too good to be true, even then. Now it seems like a dream. My mom bought the tickets as a gift (I'll always love her for that). My girlfriend went with me. I went to hear one song: “Turn the World Around.” I tried to avoid getting my hopes up, because it seemed impossible that Belafonte would perform a song I couldn’t find on any concert or greatest hits album, a song that seemed cherished by no one other than me. But I needed to hear it, as if it was a key to my childhood. No, more than that: a key to me.

“Turn the World Around” was the second song Belafonte performed that night. As soon as I heard the opening notes, I choked back tears. I basked in the glow of that song, still sure that no one in the audience appreciated it more than I did – positive that no one else thought Belafonte’s backup singers couldn’t stack up to a frog, bear, dog and whatever. Still, it was a thrill. Belafonte sang a song about the soul, and in doing so affirmed mine. (“Heart is of the river/Body is the mountain/Spirit is the sunlight/Turn the world around.”) It’s a song of hope. (“We are of the spirit/Truly of the spirit/Only can the spirit/Turn the world around.”) It’s a song of celebration. (“So is life!”) It’s a song that suggests that our truth is deep inside us, in that place the Muppets always sang from, in that place that my love for the Muppets and the movies sprang from, in that place the Steven Boone wanted us to look that night.

True, I didn’t answer Boone’s question. I didn’t pick a movie. And if I had to right now, I’m still not sure what I’d pick. But that’s a thought for another day. For now, I’m going with the Harry Belafonte episode of The Muppet Show.

Yeah, that’s me.

What movie is you?

Addendum: Sheila O'Malley also has written a post inspired by the conversation I described above. Read it here. It's a beautiful post about a beautiful conversation, and it strikes me now, having read it, that my selection actually reflects not just Steven's question but also the conversation itself. "Do you know who I am? Do I know who you are?" That's what Harry Belafonte sings about in that song, and that's precisely what we were exploring in that conversation, on a very personal level. Sheila notes, accurately, the lack of negativity or judgment in our conversation that night, and that makes me think of the end of that episode of The Muppet Show: "Turn the World Around" is the one song that even Statler and Waldorf couldn't resist. They opened themselves up to the magic. Sometimes it just happens.

Weekly Rant: Bye-Bye Boss Man (The Office)

2011-05-05T14:00:00.015-04:00

Last Thursday, in a patriotic “Fuck you!” to terrorism that left millions of Americans in tears, Pam Beesly Halpert walked through airport security without a boarding pass. Three days later, Osama bin Laden was dead. Coincidence? I suppose. Still, the timing is interesting. Sunday night Americans were marveling at just how long it took the U.S. military to catch the godfather of the most devastating terrorist attack on American soil. A few nights earlier (or, heck, for the DVR users among us, maybe that very night), Americans watched the final moments of the Michael Scott farewell episode while wondering if the writers of The Office had been to an airport in the past 10 years. With that said, you might think the Weekly Rant has emerged from a long hiatus in order to take down The Office with Navy Seal precision, but you’d be wrong. Yes, Michael Scott’s final seconds on NBC’s hit show were a tad clumsy, what with Pam getting through security without a ticket and, apparently, without her microphone. But in spirit Michael’s departure was graceful. Or at least as graceful as this character-overloaded sitcom is capable of being.

The farewell tour for Michael Scott began in earnest with the previous episode, “Michael’s Last Dundies.” The final edition of the Michael’s-choice awards had a lot in common with our first exposure in the Season 2 premiere – same inappropriateness and insensitivity, same unpredictability and same self-centeredness. The big difference this time around is that Michael’s coworkers no longer protest the Dundies’ existence. Their willingness to roll with the punches is no doubt tied to Michael’s immanent departure. (When Toby wins the Dundie for Extreme Repulsiveness, Jim and Oscar tell the much-maligned HR director that he has to suck it up and play along.) But at least as significant is that over the years the crew at Dunder Mifflin has come to recognize the Dundies – and similar Michael antics – for what they really are: desperate pleas for acceptance. Those equally unsure of themselves (Erin, Andy, even Dwight) are the ones who emotionally connect with the Dundies, while the self-assured have learned to look the other way (Jim, Pam, Oscar, etc.) and the universally oblivious (Creed, Meredith, Kelly, etc.) remain so. Watching Michael host his final ceremony it’s clear that his show is as sophisticated as ever (complete with cue cards and a prerecorded video intro), and yet his level of effort has gone down considerably. At the final Dundies, there are no costumes or characters. Finally, it’s as if Michael realizes that he’s character enough on his own.

Michael’s almost eerie calm (relatively speaking, of course) is key to the beauty of what happens next. After the Dundies ceremony gets Michael kicked out of yet another restaurant, the crew heads back to Dunder Mifflin to let him finish the show. But it doesn’t last long. As Andy accepts his Dundie, he uses his time in the spotlight as an excuse to begin an all-staff tribute to Michael, singing “9,986,000 Minutes” to the tune of “Seasons of Love” from the musical Rent in celebration of Michael’s tenure at Dunder Mifflin. It’s a sweet gesture, but what’s especially touching is Michael’s reaction. As his staff starts to sing, Michael peeks over to the camera and says, “Something’s happening!” It’s the unsuppressed, gleeful response of a guy who has spent his life repeatedly trying to inspire, even choreograph, such outpourings of affection, only to now, at last, find himself as the genuine recipient of it. It’s a beautiful moment – touching not because Michael has completely earned it but because we know that he hasn’t. A bit unrealistic? Yeah. But this all-staff chorus is more in character than the YouTube wedding march rip-off that asked us to believe that a staff that bickered all the way up to Jim and Pam’s nuptials would be able to pull off a choreographed dance routine almost flawlessly. The performance of “9,986,000 Minutes” isn’t so much about love as about forgiveness and acceptance, letting bygones be bygones and celebrating Michael’s best intentions. For one more week, for one last song, they could suck it up and give Michael the farewell he so desperately wanted.

It’s a gesture that Michael reciprocates in the final episode, “Goodbye, Michael,” which mostly consists of him going around to each staff member to offer a small gift of thanks or advice. His heart is in the right place, but of course Michael can’t help but be Michael, which is precisely what has made him such a tremendously enjoyable character over the years. His barometer for appropriateness is better calibrated than when we first met him, but he’s hardly overcome his tendency for inappropriateness. In one scene, Michael fails to realize that by attempting to encourage Kevin not to act like a caricature he actually reduces him to one. Later, his most Michael-esque moment of the finale might be when he brings together three staff members for a group pep talk, because even on his last day he can’t be bothered to make time for them individually. Or maybe it’s the moment when he calls everyone into the conference room for one last meeting, only to be at a loss for words and fall back on his offensive Asian character Ping (think Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, minus the makup). For all the ways Michael has grown – suffering through one last meeting with Toby without insulting him, or showing a remarkable amount of self-awareness when he laughs at Oscar’s hilariously low opinion of him – he’s still mostly the same Michael we met seven years ago. We just understand him better.

The emotional highpoint of the Michael finale isn’t the silent, Lost in Translation goodbye hug with Pam at the airport. Rather, it’s the scene in which Michael quietly eats his lunch in the break room and tears up listening to his staff at the table next to him engaging in typical mundane banter. Over the years it’s been obvious how much Michael craves his staff’s approval. (No on-camera meditation got to the heart of his personality more than this one from Season 4: “Do I need to be liked? Absolutely not. I like to be liked. I enjoy being liked. I have to be liked. But it’s not like this compulsive need to be liked, like my need to be praised.”) But if these final episodes have chronicled an awakening of the Dunder Mifflin staff in regard to how much they secretly like their boss, they’ve also captured Michael realizing just how deeply he enjoys these people for who they are, rather than who they are to him. Michael’s tear-filled eyes in that break room scene say everything he can’t convey in words without embarrassing himself. The power of that simple scene far exceeds that of the episode’s boldest grasp for big emotion, the blubbering final conversation between Michael and Jim, which plays more like a meta moment between two actors while reminding us yet again of how inconsistent Jim has been in recent seasons, to the point that when he tells Michael that he’s the best boss he’s ever had we can’t tell if he’s being sincere or faking it on Michael’s behalf.

The question now is what The Office will be like without Michael Scott. Different, for sure, but I don’t think it’s doomed. Over the years, the series has become so overstuffed with characters and storylines that it hardly resembles what it was at the start in terms of structure, never mind quality. Cheers never lost Sam Malone, but it survived several other significant cast changes without a hitch because of the strength of its structure. There’s no reason The Office can’t do the same. The truth is that the Dunder Mifflin staff’s growing acceptance of Michael had become something of a hindrance. By his final episode, even Michael’s most faithful supporter, Dwight, admitted that he’d long ago given up expecting Michael to do the right or sensible thing. It’s precisely because the Dunder Mifflin staff had become so comfortable with Michael that the series had to result to extremes to make them uncomfortable: having Michael quit to start his own company, having Jim take a management position, introducing characters like Charles Minor (who worked) and Jo Bennett (who didn’t), etc. In theory, Michael’s departure could allow it to get back to basics.

Granted, the appearance of Will Ferrell’s Deangelo Vickers is a reminder that replacing Michael won’t be as simple as plucking another ignoramus from central casting. But as “Goodbye, Michael” came to a close with Deangelo having a meltdown over party cake, there was also a glimmer of hope. When Dwight looks at Jim with an expression that says, “Oh, no, not again!” it’s a reminder that the core of The Office’s humor is less about the hilarious stupidity of an inept boss’s antics than about the hilarious discomfort that those antics inspire. With the right discomforting boss, there’s still room for high comedy at Dunder Mifflin. But forgetting Michael Scott won’t be easy. As Michael says at the end of “Michael’s Last Dundies,” in what will go down as one of my favorite line readings in the show’s history, “This is going to hurt like a motherfucker.”

The Conversations: Wong Kar Wai

2011-04-29T13:00:00.003-04:00

It's been a longer than usual lapse since the previous edition of The Conversations, but that's not the reason for the image above. Today the series returns with a look at the career of the time-obsessed Wong Kar Wai. Ed Howard and I don't cover every film of Wong's career, but we do take a healthy and typically in-depth sampling: Days of Being Wild (1990), Chungking Express (1994), In the Mood for Love (2000), 2046 (2004) and My Blueberry Nights (2007). Wong is of course known for his blatant stylistic flourishes and themes, and over the course of the discussion Ed and I point out moments when it works and when it doesn't. We also discuss how Wong's films have a way of overlapping one another to create the feeling of a director making one sprawling work. What this discussion is missing is your input. So, if you can, make some time over the next few days, read through the piece and tell us what we missed in the comments at The House Next Door.

Click here for an archive of The Conversations.

On the Money: POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

2011-04-27T10:30:00.001-04:00

Morgan Spurlock’s brand personality is “mindful/playful.” That’s what he learns while consulting with a branding expert in the process of making POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. It’s a shame Spurlock didn’t learn that while making his previous documentary, Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?, because that would have spared us the pain of sitting through it. As Spurlock now knows, when a brand has a hybrid identity it’s imperative to preserve the balance. Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden? failed in large part because Spurlock fluctuated wildly between excessive playfulness (an animated sequence that put bin Laden’s head on MC Hammer’s body) and excessive seriousness (pretending to contemplate risking his life by walking into the Taliban’s hood), coming off foolish either way. In this film, though, Spurlock rediscovers his brand essence, and in doing so revitalizes the chemistry that made 2004’s Super Size Me a breakout success. There will still be those who find Spurlock’s playfulness too childish and his mindfulness too elementary, but what you see in The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is Spurlock at his most Spurlockian – take it or leave it.

This time around, I’ll take it. Spurlock isn’t the documentary filmmaker you want exploring torture, terrorism, fraud, or the self-combustion of the American economy, but by the same measure Alex Gibney and Charles Ferguson probably aren’t the right guys to test the impact of a fast-food diet by eating at McDonald’s for a month. There are real problems in this world, and blatant product placement in movies just ain’t one of them. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a topic worth exploring, and that’s why Spurlock is the man for the job. His mindful/playful approach is perfect for taking this topic just seriously enough. You’ll likely learn a thing or two while watching his film, but like Jon Stewart on The Daily Show Spurlock has a gift for imparting knowledge with a tone that suggests he figures you know this stuff already. Put another way, he doesn’t talk down to the audience, which is precisely why it’s so nauseating when he occasionally tries to pull one over on us with some clearly calculated acting. (In Where in the World it was going through the charade of strapping on a bulletproof vest as if we bought for a moment that he was going to follow bin Laden to the darkest corners of the earth. In this film it’s telling his lawyer, ‘Gee, now that all these corporate partners are involved I feel like I’m losing the artistic control of my film.’) Spurlock’s documentaries thrive when he operates with the notion that we’re as intelligent as he is, and they fall apart when he forgets that it’s actually true.

The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, like Super Size Me before it, is based on a concept that’s so stupid it’s brilliant: Spurlock exposes the way product placement works in TV and films not just by making a documentary about product placement but by financing said film through product placement and using those product placement negotiations as the film itself. It’s the Penrose stairs of documentaries. As Spurlock picks up financial backers, he works their products into the “action” – sometimes casually, other times as blatantly and humorously as possible. In a span of a few minutes, we might see Spurlock driving his Mini Cooper (sponsor) to a fill up with gas at a Sheetz (sponsor) before heading to the airport to take a flight on Jet Blue (sponsor) to some city where he’ll spend the night at a Hyatt (sponsor), all while sipping on POM Wonderful (marquee sponsor). Although the gas station scene would have felt forced, those other shots are virtually indistinguishable from the run-of-the-mill product placement that we encounter every day and mostly ignore. So is product placement really that evil? After all, as Spurlock asks, if there’s going to be a car in a movie, is it such a bad thing to have an automaker finance part of the film to make it a specific car? Probably not. But the next question is stickier: At what point does sound financial strategizing become shameless selling-out? While some product placement is subtle or directly compatible with a film’s essence (think of James Bond in an Aston Martin), Spurlock provides a few examples of modern TV shows that use product placement so blatantly that it comes off like satire. In those cases, the tail is wagging the dog.

Watching Spurlock’s film is a bit like attending one of those time-share pitches in an effort to walk away with a free iPad (or whatever they give away these days). In exchange for having product placement shoved in our face for 90 minutes we get to sit back and laugh at the absurdity of it all. By the end of the film, Spurlock has made it clear just how prevalent product placement is within TV and movies, but he’s also reminded us of how ubiquitous advertising is in our daily lives (except in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where billboards and other outdoor advertising is outlawed; an amazing sight). Given that we’re so immersed in advertising, it’s reasonable to wonder if a movie can accurately depict our modern lives without intentional or unintentional product placement.

Also worth pondering is the potential effect of our growing awareness of product placement on a filmmaker’s ability to evoke character through the use of products. In an interview with Spurlock, Quentin Tarantino reveals that the diner scene in Reservoir Dogs was supposed to take place at a Denny’s, except that Denny’s wanted nothing to do with his film. If that scene had taken place at a Denny’s it would have been yet another pop cultural reference shaping the way we view those characters. But that was back in 1992; comparatively innocent times. Today, the sight of a Denny’s would reek of product placement, even in the highly unlikely scenario that Denny’s didn’t pay to play. Back in 1968, when Frank Bullitt screamed through the streets of San Francisco in a Ford Mustang, the product spoke to the nature of the man. A similar scene today would likely speak only to the nature of a film’s financing. I would have loved to see Spurlock explore that topic, but he was busy selling his movie.

Reality Bites: Certified Copy

2011-04-25T18:41:00.001-04:00

Early in Certified Copy, one of the main characters, an author who has just published an extended essay on art authenticity, describes watching a boy looking at the statue of David. Actually, to be more precise, the author describes a boy looking at a statue of David. The boy is in the Palazzo della Signoria in Florence, Italy, so the statue in front of the boy is only a replica of the “real” thing. The boy doesn’t know this, of course. He regards the statue with no concern for the statue’s pedigree. Instead, he regards it as artistic depiction alone, and he is awestruck. Is the boy wrong to feel that way? The author would argue he isn’t, suggesting that the search for originality places value on lineage instead of artistry. But if the boy’s reaction to the David replica serves as a parable about the purity of appreciating art without prejudice, it’s also something of a cautionary tale. Because when the boy looks upon the replica in amazement he makes the same mistake that so many of us make when we fall in love with anything: he regards the beauty in front of him without any notion of context. Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy is about art and relationships, but mostly it’s about the elusiveness of truth and the imperfection of perception.

At least, I think that’s what it’s about. For a film that’s little more than two characters walking and talking, often very explicitly, about how they feel, Certified Copy is a remarkably challenging film to decode. (Major spoilers ahead throughout.) When the film begins, the characters played by William Shimell and Juliette Binoche appear to be perfect strangers – he’s the author and she’s an antiques dealer and single mom who appears to have a crush on him – but by the end of the film it’s suggested that these characters have been married for 15 years. Is this a ruse, a game? Are this man and woman play-acting, either pretending not to know one another at the start or pretending to be married later on? Perhaps, but I doubt it. The duo’s early getting-to-know-you banter is too mundane and their eventual marital spats are too intimate for this to be role-playing. The only rational explanation that I can come up with is to accept that the film’s halves are as irrational as they appear: the man and woman do start their day together as complete strangers and they do end the day as (quasi-estranged?) husband and wife. This impossible shift doesn’t mean that the characters are crazy or that the film is disingenuous. Rather, Kiarostami is trading narrative cohesion for audience manipulation.

The effect of having the relationship rewritten as it progresses is to put the audience in the same position as that boy looking up at the David replica. The more time we spend with this man and woman, the more context we are given, but not necessarily more truth, and try as we might it’s difficult to shake our initial gut assessment of their relationship, even once it appears to be mistaken. Cinema is littered with films to use narrative trickery to lead us one direction only to redefine reality in the end, but unlike The Usual Suspects, Fight Club, The Sixth Sense, and so on, Kiarostami’s film doesn’t (necessarily) arrive at a clear and unequivocal truth. It arrives at another truth. Certified Copy doesn’t redefine reality so much as it undefines it. Convoluted as that sounds, it’s the only path the film can take while remaining consistent with its themes. The film’s hypothesis is that absolute truth doesn’t exist and that the search for authenticity only sends us into a tailspin of trying to determine what authenticity really is and what value it really has, if any. Time and again in our lives, what once seemed true is proven false. When this happens, it isn’t reality that changes – because the world was never flat. What changes is our perception of reality.

If that last paragraph strikes you as both elaborate and indistinct, it’s a good reflection of Kiarostami’s film. Certified Copy will prove frustrating for those who want mysteries solved and philosophies gift-wrapped, and yet it’s hardly short on blatant hypothesizing and experimentation. In one scene the woman takes the author to a museum where they discuss a painting that was revered for hundreds of years as an original until it was subsequently proven to be a copy. The painting remains on the wall in spite of this revelation because even though its origins have been redefined, the impact of the copy cannot be undone. Just like a child might keep on loving a parent after a marital infidelity is exposed, the painting’s admirers continue to revere the copy even after its authenticity is rewritten. This would seem to prove the author’s point, that authenticity is of minimal importance, but another scene later on will challenge that notion. After the man and woman get into a bitter spat over the meaning of a sculpture in a courtyard, a passerby will urge the author to comfort his “wife” by putting a hand on her shoulder. Perhaps reluctantly, the author follows the man’s advice, but as compassionate as the gesture appears it also feels like a lie; the man’s wife believes it’s a gesture inspired from within, not an act choreographed by a complete stranger. This scene by no means proves the importance of authenticity, but it reminds us that legitimacy is by no means irrelevant.

Thus, perhaps a better question than whether this man and woman are married is whether they believe what they say to one another. Shimell and Binoche suggest both affection and hostility as this couple, and they do it so well that it’s as difficult to discount their characters’ bond as it is to believe in it. At some point it’s hard to keep from wondering if this relationship is yet another experiment by the author – testing the power of imitation. Kiarostami’s camera often captures his subjects from straight ahead, but the more we stare into these characters’ faces the less they seem to reveal. The film closes with a shot of the author looking into a mirror (actually Kiarostami’s camera) as if staring into his soul, but maybe he’s just studying his face and noting his age. Certified Copy is full of moments like that one. In one particularly captivating shot, an anonymous bride sits in the foreground waiting for her opportunity to have her photo taken. In her blank yet anguished expression you might see impatience, exhaustion, or even despair. Maybe something else. Whatever you see, Certified Copy suggests it likely reveals more about your truth than hers.

A Pawn in the Game: The Conspirator

2011-04-17T16:28:00.002-04:00

Robin Wright has a face of contradictions: soft blond beauty made out of firm features and a cold stare. It’s a face that welcomes us close but that never really lets us in. When Wright smiles, the expression seems sincere but rarely entirely carefree. It’s as if her mind is elsewhere, working out some problem much more significant than whatever she’s doing, or simply thinking three steps ahead of whatever is going on. On screen or in public, she’s a little aloof and a lot hard to read. That’s why Wright is a terrific choice to play Mary Surratt, the proprietor of a Washington, DC, boarding house that served as a meeting place for those accused of conspiring to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward on April 14, 1865 – among them Mary’s son John Surratt and, of course, John Wilkes Booth. Mary Surratt was hanged as a fellow conspirator less than three months after the assassination plot was carried out (to varying degrees of success), but her actual role in the affair, and even her awareness of it, has been a subject of debate ever since. Played by Wright in Robert Redford’s The Conspirator, Mary Surratt isn’t just an ambiguous figure, she’s an enigmatic one, too. More than questioning what Surratt did or didn’t know, Wright makes us wonder how Surratt feels about the whole mess.

Mary Surratt is a complex figure, to be sure. Mastermind or just mother? Lincoln hater or family protector? Does Mary resent her son for not coming forward, or does she blame herself for her son’s flight? Wright’s subdued performance makes it hard to say and compelling to wonder. Watching Wright in The Conspirator is a reminder of how underutilized she is – not just in cinema in general but also in this film specifically. Although by title Surratt is the focus of The Conspirator, in actuality she’s nothing more than a supporting player in a picture that’s less about her than about the trial in which she was convicted and less about the events of the past that it portrays than about the events of the present to which it alludes. Redford’s film may have the whiff of a History Channel reenactment, but above all else The Conspirator is a metaphor directly challenging the legality of the upcoming trials of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and his coconspirators, who like Mary Surratt before them will be tried via military tribunal, rather than in civilian courts. Written by James D. Solomon, The Conspirator repeatedly argues that a conviction can only be just if it is achieved through just means, via a civilian trial in which guilt isn’t assumed ahead of time.

Of course, that’s an easier case to make when Mary Surratt takes the shape of the willowy Wright (the real Surratt had hips), and when she’s portrayed as nothing worse than a protective mother who believed that her son was "only" out to kidnap Abraham Lincoln in order to ransom the president in exchange for southern prisoners of war. (It’s actually quite shocking how innocent the film makes a presidential kidnapping sound, as if the conspirators meant to “just borrow” the president for a few hours, like neighbors sharing a wheelbarrow on a sunny summer afternoon.) It’s also an easier case to make when John Surratt (Johnny Simmons) is portrayed as a soft-featured innocent, a young Southern idealist who falls under the influence of the sinister Booth. In the court trial that takes up more than half of the film’s 123-minute running time, we hear that John Surratt had weapons waiting for Booth that April night, and that Mary knew about them. But because these events aren’t actually depicted on screen they come off like myths deviously manufactured by the prosecution to ensure Surratt’s conviction. I don’t say this to oppose The Conspirator’s moral stance about the judicial process. I mean only to point out that Redford has done just as fine a job of stacking the deck to support his desired outcome as the U.S. government seems to have done to ensure its desired outcome in the trial of Mary Surratt.

To Redford’s credit, though, he has layered his editorializing within a drama that satisfies as historical reproduction. Speaking as someone who has done a decent amount of reading about Booth and the assassination plot (I strongly recommend American Brutus, as well as Manhunt), and who routinely passes by Ford’s Theatre on Saturday movie excursions (often lunching at a restaurant that occupies the former footprint of Herndon House, where Booth first announced his assassination plot), the film’s attention to detail is impressive. The sequence near the start of the film depicting the simultaneous attacks on Lincoln and Seward, and the aborted attack on Johnson, is a gripping bit of parallel storytelling that does well to evoke the brutality and intimacy of the attacks, as well as the chaos of Tenth Street afterward, as Lincoln is carried to what will be his deathbed. Likewise, Mary Surratt’s final moments at the Washington Arsenal are expertly recreated, right down to the black umbrella that shields her from the sun during her walk to the gallows. The Conspirator was shot in Savannah, Georgia, but it feels like Washington, thanks in part to a few stunning CGI shots that depict the White House amidst mostly undeveloped land and in front of a Washington Monument that has just begun its climb toward the sky. Thanks to all this, The Conspirator has atmosphere, which is more than could be said for Redford’s previous directorial effort, Lions for Lambs, which is less a work of drama than an academic exercise captured on film.

That said, the ambience of this film is thicker in some scenes than others. It’s hard to overlook that much of The Conspirator is distinguishable from an episode of Law & Order by costume alone. The protagonist of the film is James McAvoy’s Frederick Aiken, a young lawyer given the unenviable task of defending a woman no one in the north wants to see set free. The rhythms of the trial are like any courtroom drama about the presumed guilty: Aiken is reluctant to take the case at first, but before long he’s risking his relationship and his professional and social standing by going all-in in the name of truth, justice and the American way. Same old, same old. By dedicating so much attention to the trial, Redford neatly sidesteps Mary Surratt’s culpability while waving his finger at those who condemned her – and, thus, by extension chastising the current government for the military tribunals coming up. Alas, Redford also sidesteps Mary Surratt, a complex figure who isn’t given enough screen time to become a complex character. Just as before, Mary Surratt, guilty or innocent, remains a pawn in the game.

Ordinary People: All the President’s Men

2011-04-14T06:21:00.001-04:00

The reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein didn’t just halt a presidency, it also helped to create a new American mindset. After Watergate, there was no more pretending that any public office was too lofty to be above crime or that any crime was too lowly for the corrupt to commit. Richard Nixon taught America that even a president could be a common crook (among other things), and the reporting of The Washington Post proved that a free press could be a powerful tool against unscrupulousness. In the years that followed, the government grew less trusting of the press while the press became more emboldened, proudly shining their studded collars as America’s de facto watchdogs. “Watergate,” by which I mean not just the crime itself but also the exposure of its perpetrators and schemers and its resulting ramifications, was a seismic event. Given its impact, one might expect the signature film about this epic “moment” in history to be populated by titans – imposing figures of villainy and heroism. But it isn’t. All the President’s Men is a story of ordinary people. That’s precisely what makes it so powerful.

Released in 1976, not even two full years removed from Nixon’s resignation, Alan J. Pakula’s film isn’t ripped from the headlines so much as it’s spun out of scribbles in reporters’ notebooks. It’s a film about details – details that when viewed alone had little meaning but that once put together rattled the foundation of America’s government. It’s also, of course, a film about the men who unearthed and sequenced those details – men who, if not for circumstance, would have appeared equally unremarkable. Woodward and Bernstein are for the most part household names now, but they weren’t then, and Pakula’s film, based on a screenplay by William Goldman, doesn’t even begin to suggest the incredible fame (by print journalism standards) that awaited them. Played by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, respectively, Woodward and Bernstein are like a pair of terriers biting at the government’s pant legs and following their noses toward they-don’t-know-quite-what. They are tenacious, but also uncertain, and when they have to face the newspaper’s executive editor, Ben Bradlee (a perfectly cast Jason Robards), it’s usually with their tails between their legs. Woodward and Bernstein don’t look or act like the guys who have it all figured out, because they rarely do. And they don’t act like heroes because it never occurs to them that they might be.

The film’s cinematography does wonders to accentuate the anonymity of Woodward and Bernstein, as well as the magnitude of their challenge. Over and over, the reporters are shown in vast spaces surrounded by the chaos of indifference. Memorable is the famous scene at the Library of Congress in which the camera hovers just over the heads of Woodward and Bernstein, as they sift through piles of library checkout cards in search of a clue, and then reverse-zooms toward the ceiling, revealing a reading room bustling with routine activity. Just as effective are several shots of “Woodstein” pulling a car out of the parking structure at The Washington Post, the camera again pulling back to suggest their small place within a city of secrets. And of course there are the multiple shots within the newsroom depicting Woodward and Bernstein making their calls and typing their stories from unspectacular desks nearby other reporters at equally unspectacular desks doing more of the same. For the latter, cinematographer Gordon Willis regularly employed a split diopter, capturing in equal focus the reporter in the foreground, usually Redford’s Woodward, and the activity of the newsroom behind him. These shots remind that long before Watergate was an A-1 headline it was buried “in the middle,” just another story fighting for attention.

Willis’ split diopter is also used to provide historical context. In one scene, a TV in the foreground shows Nixon receiving the Republican nomination for a second term as Woodward, in the background, hammers away at his typewriter. Nixon is an elusive figure in this film, rarely mentioned or shown – a sign of how long it took the Watergate story to unfold before Tricky Dick became forever linked with the scandal. Woodward and Bernstein are too green or too innocent to even suspect the president’s involvement. They investigate their stories not with a zeal to turn power on its head – although an effect of Watergate would be to fill college journalism programs with idealistic reporters hungry for blood – rather, Woodward and Bernstein are determined to report their developing story to its fullest, no matter where it leads them. Often those destinations are less than glamorous. A good chunk of the film shows Woodward and Bernstein knocking on doors and crossing off names. They interview secretaries and aides, painstakingly drawing information out of their subjects and then struggling just as mightily to find another source who will confirm it. They sift through phonebooks and receipts. In between, they doodle (Woodward) and smoke (Bernstein). They don’t triumph over their story so much as they persevere.

Although All the President’s Men could be casually described as a film about two journalists taking down a corrupt president, the film is surprisingly free of any grand emotional crescendo. There’s no point in which Woodward or Bernstein are transformed from grinding members of the workforce into patriots, ala Norma Rae scrawling “UNION” on a piece of cardboard in a brave act of defiance. They begin the film as wide-eyed reporters and they end it that way, too. The film’s penultimate scene shows Nixon’s second inauguration on newsroom TVs as Woodward and Bernstein write the stories that one day will bring down Nixon and make them famous, but not quite yet. That’s why the film’s most imposing character isn’t Woodward or Bernstein but Hal Holbrook’s Deep Throat, the cryptic all-knowing guy in the trench coat, who by stepping out from the shadows in a parking garage became America’s fantasy image of the anonymous source. He is a movie character, straight out of film noir. Woodward and Bernstein are more like extras in an epic production, unaware of how close they are to the spotlight – until all of a sudden they’re in it. Reminiscent of Willis’ split diopter shots, All the President’s Men is about the seemingly mundane activities of the background coming into equal focus with the attention-grabbing stuff in the foreground. Heroes didn't make that happen. Two guys with notebooks did.

Express Train: Source Code

2011-04-11T14:10:00.001-04:00

In Source Code, Duncan Jones’ follow-up to his mind-bending debut Moon, it’s not just the audience who joins the story in medias res. The main character does, too. The film’s opening 10 minutes involve a guy waking up across from a smitten woman he’s never met before, on a military mission he’s never heard of before, inside the body of a man he’s never seen before and, oh yeah, onboard a train heading into Chicago that, technically speaking, has already exploded. For most films that would be the climax. For this film, it’s a tease. Source Code is about a man inhabiting another man’s body, Quantum Leap style, in order to repeatedly relieve the same time period, Groundhog Day style, in order to figure out who the bomber is, Murder on the Orient Express style, all while under the command of some military types, Avatar style, all while falling for the girl across the way, Before Sunrise style, all while looking to make amends from beyond the grave, Heaven Can Wait style, and all while Jones injects urgency into almost every frame, Christopher Nolan style. If that makes Source Code sound like an especially busy film, it is. But to Jones’ credit, it’s also a short one.

Unlike Nolan, who in his two most recent pictures, The Dark Knight and Inception, has attempted to sustain armrest-gripping intensity for two-and-a-half hours, Jones is content to leave the stage after a modest 93 minutes. That’s actually four minutes shorter than Moon, which is narratively straightforward by comparison. Backhanded though this compliment might seem, Source Code’s brevity is its masterstroke. The film is overstuffed with under-developed and unnecessary subplots, it has a central plot with more holes than a Dunkin’ Donuts, it has a repetitive design that tempts tediousness and, if that weren’t enough, it spends most of its energy leading us toward a remarkably flat (and false) climax, but none of that matters too much because Source Code never slows down long enough for us to complain about the view and it quits while its ahead. At 120 minutes, heck, maybe even at 100, Source Code would be yet another disheartening slog through the all-too-familiar. Instead, it’s one of the livelier movie experiences of the spring, all because Jones has the common sense to exit the ball before his carriage turns back into a pumpkin.

Of course, a tremendous amount of the film’s appeal must be credited to Jake Gyllenhaal, who as the main character, Colter Stevens, is the focus of nearly every scene. It’s a perfect bit of casting, really (as is using Scott Bakula for the voice of Stevens’ father). Gyllenhaal has enough innate sweetness to charm the girl across the aisle, and he has enough physicality to make it convincing when Stevens breaks another passenger’s jaw with one punch. American films are filled with so much testosterone these days that Gyllenhaal now qualifies as a Jimmy Stewart-esque everyman, even though at one point his character jumps from a moving train. Ben Ripley’s screenplay is designed to unfold with unceasing ticking-time-bomb urgency, but the script is also peppered with some clever one-liners that Gyllenhaal handles with ease, and his flirtatious banter with Michelle Monaghan, as Christina, the pretty girl across the aisle, serves as a nice counterbalance to the scenes between quantum leaps, when an agitated Stevens pleads for more information about his mission and his personal fate. A nitpicker would say that Stevens’ romance with Christina is flawed, because she has a history with the man whose body Stevens is inhabiting, Sean Fentress, while Stevens gets to relive just a few precious seconds with Christina before searching for the bomb and the bomber, but actually it makes perfect sense: Each time Stevens quantum-leaps into the train he finds himself staring at a beautiful woman who is ready to jump his bones – making the real Sean Fentress the best wingman of all time. Makes sense to me.

The more problematic relationship is the one between Stevens and Vera Farmiga’s Colleen Goodwin. Goodwin is the Air Force captain who acts as a kind of air-traffic control officer for Stevens’ leaps into the “source code,” a kind of reverberation in time in which Stevens takes on Sean Fentress’ body in the hopes of figuring out who bombed a commuter train (an event that has already happened) before the terrorist strikes again. To put it lightly, Goodwin isn’t up for this job. As Stevens repeatedly presses Goodwin for more information, Farmiga is reduced to a dizzying array of winces and head bobs that scream “I’m very uncomfortable with your questions!” (Just like children shouldn’t be allowed to play with sharp knives, Goodwin should be allowed to play poker.) The longer these scenes go on, the more evident it becomes that Jones and Ripley haven’t thought this part through. Goodwin and her boss, Jeffrey Wright’s Dr. Rutledge, the mad scientist behind source code technology, keep insisting that time is of the essence and that all of Stevens’ questions undermine the mission, but their actions suggest otherwise. For example, rather than giving Stevens all the information that he needs from the start, Goodwin and Rutledge pique his curiosity by remaining tight-lipped and bickering with him. Even worse, Rutledge spends the majority of the film with only a casual interest in Stevens’ mission, always seeming to have something more important to do, although by the end of the film he’s insisting that Stevens’ mission is the first even marginally successful demonstration of source code technology. (You'd think that might get his undivided attention.)

Asking the audience to believe that a man can leap into “source code” isn’t a problem. That’s the nature of science fiction – it’s a leap we’re ready to make. But Source Code works against itself when it repeatedly – and quite logically – insists that the most important thing that Colter Stevens can do is save millions of lives from being killed by a dirty bomb in Chicago and then suggests that it’s more important for Stevens to get the girl or achieve closure with his father. After setting us up for a nice whodunit, Source Code takes a side door out of that thriller in an effort to tug at our emotions. To say it fails would be overly harsh; Gyllenhaal is too endearing. But whereas Moon finishes on a mentally stimulating and emotionally stirring highpoint that the film has been working toward all along, Source Code ends with a tensionless showdown between two of the film’s supporting characters and a gag-inducing affirmation of cultural harmony that could run under the words “From the Mind of M. Night Shyamalan.” For a film that starts with a bang, Source Code ends with a fizzle. With his second picture, Jones demonstrates a good sense of when to quit, just not the best judgment about where to go.

The Eyes of March (2011)

2011-03-15T07:00:00.031-04:00

The tradition continues! Below you'll find 11 unedited eye shots, plus the one above. Some of them are very identifiable. Others are nearly impossible. I do this less as a quiz than as a celebration of eye shots, which I find incredibly compelling (even in movies like Red Riding Hood). Still, I've numbered each item so you can provided guesses in the comments section. This is certainly a more difficult batch than in 2010 or 2009. Enjoy!

Numbers correspond to the image below them.

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

(7)

(8)

(9)

(10)

(11)

What Beautiful Eyes She Has: Red Riding Hood

2011-03-14T16:26:00.000-04:00

Is it premature to start campaigning for the 2012 Academy Awards? Because if not I’d like to nominate Amanda Seyfried for your consideration for Best Actress for her performance in Red Riding Hood. Oh, I know she can’t win. Her portrayal of the titularly cloaked Valerie has none of the hallmarks of Oscar success. She doesn’t play a historically or culturally significant character. She didn’t transform her shapely figure in deference to her craft or with disregard for her beauty. She delivers no rousing monologue. She adopts no quirky accent. She refrains from dissolving into a puddle of tears. And she doesn’t so much as lay her tongue on the scenery to see if it’s worth chewing. Instead, Seyfried does something all the more remarkable: she delivers a performance that’s unfailingly watchable and convincing within a film that can only be described with those words when she is on screen, and usually not even then. It isn’t the stuff of Oscar, but if you think about it, maybe it should be.

Red Riding Hood is a mess, sometimes in entertaining ways but mostly in befuddling ones. The direction is unproductively busy, the dialogue is awkward and most of the bit parts are so stiffly acted that they could be mistaken for product placement for Viagra. The biggest problem, though, is that the film doesn’t seem to have a clue what it’s about. Written by David Johnson, Red Riding Hood has elements of gothic horror, fairy tale fantasy, tribal fear-of-the-other and even playful farce, but it wears those threads like a tightwad trying on dress shirts at Banana Republic – which is to say not for long and without ultimate investment. Instead the film settles for its Shakespearean-cum-Meyerean romance, not so much because it appears to have any ideas about the genre but because the Twilight books and films have proven there’s a market for that stuff. Better films weave together multiple genres seamlessly; Red Riding Hood bounces around like an actor struggling to find its motivation. In short spans, the film is almost Lynchian, although without the mindfucking boldness or twisted symbolism. Some of the earliest printed versions of Little Red Riding Hood, dating back more than 400 years, are thought to be cautionary tales about a woman’s coming of age – the red cloak representing menstruation and the wolf’s ultimate triumph emphasizing the danger of trust and lost innocence, but there’s no deeper meaning to this cinematic adaptation. What you see is all that’s there.

Red Riding Hood is the fifth directorial effort of Catharine Hardwicke, who helmed 2008’s Twilight and approaches this film like it’s a sequel, with lots of helicopter shots – er, CGI approximations of helicopter shots – sweeping over a mountainous, dense woodland, and an appearance by Billy Burke as the heroine’s father. Hardwicke was a production designer before she was a director, and Red Riding Hood is at least visually striking, if never dazzling, getting a lot of mileage out of the contrast of that vivid red cloak against pure white snow. Hardwicke also spends a lot of time appreciating Seyfried’s face, and who can blame her? Seyfried has the kind of beauty that you could pass on the street without noticing but that once noticed you cannot look away from. Her wide blue eyes make her perfect for her role as Valerie – the innocent young woman with multiple suitors and a heightened sense that danger is lurking in the dark corners of her village. After Valerie comes face-to-snout with the snarling, talking wolf (who might or might not be played by Taylor Lautner, who can say?), Hardwicke employs numerous tight eye shots, contrasting Valerie’s bright orbs with the dark, perhaps sinister eyes of her fellow village people (not to be confused with the Village People, alas, because that would have been fun). Which of the villagers is the werewolf hiding by day in human form? Amazingly (spoiler warning), the film spends a lot of time implying that the wolf might be Valerie’s grandmother, which is odd considering that Grandma is the eatee, not the eater, in the old fairy tale. Then again, this is a film that sends a dozen-or-so men into the wild on foot, in a snow storm, in the middle of the night, without gloves, hats or coats. So I guess sometimes the most obvious details are the easiest to miss.

On that note, it would be easy to overlook Seyfried’s performance, until we note the fact that she’s always the most captivating presence on screen – even when opposite Gary Oldman, as a fanatical werewolf hunter, and the always delightful Julie Christie as Grandmother. The film gets some well-earned laughs from the latter, while the former is overshadowed by his character’s eccentricities – and for Oldman, that’s really saying something. His purple-robed Solomon has silver-tipped fingernails and travels through the countryside with a pair of black doormen, who double as werewolf hunters, but nothing beats the enormous steel elephant that Solomon drags along with him as a torture device, locking stonewalling would-be informants in the belly of the pachyderm and then starting a fire underneath the metal beast in an effort to make them talk. You might be thinking that thumbscrews would have a similar effect, while still leaving room in the overhead bin of Solomon’s carriage, but that would eliminate the film’s best bit of unintentional humor, when upon capturing one of the villagers Solomon screams, “Lock him up in the elephant!” You don’t have to be Nicolas Cage to kind of love a line like that.

And you don’t have to enjoy this film to kind of love Seyfried in it. She’s just so positively effortless (with the exception of an early scene in which Hardwicke makes Valerie fall to her knees in mourning for her slain sister while the rest of the villagers stand around like kids looking at a dead bird on the playground). This movie may be a mess, but Seyfried never plays it that way, maybe because she has experience. In recent years, Seyfried has made miserable material slightly less painful (Jennifer’s Body) while making mediocre material seem almost solid (Dear John). If this keeps up, one day we’ll have to bemoan the fact that Seyfried isn’t offered roles worthy of her abilities. For now, though, we can take comfort in the fact that Hollywood is at least building movies around her. What big, beautiful eyes Seyfried has! Talent, too.

The Conversations: Last Tango in Paris

2011-03-07T21:25:00.000-05:00

The Conversations is back with a look at Bernardo Bertolucci's much debated Last Tango in Paris. Is it an "erotic" film? Was Pauline Kael's orgasmic rave overblown? What motivates these characters? What is Brando doing? What was Bertolucci trying to say with this film? These are some of the questions that Ed Howard and I attempt to answer. But what do you think? Head on over to The House Next Door and join in the conversation!

Click here for an archive of The Conversations.

83rd Academy Awards Live Blog

2011-02-27T17:54:00.065-05:00

A full transcript of a very forgettable night is below. Read bottom to top.

(All times Eastern | Remember to refresh often)

11:43: So a bunch of kids sing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," giving me hope that the coming year in film will be better than this one, and that this time next year I'm celebrating a deserved (fingers-crossed) Best Director win for Terrence Malick. A guy can dream, right? Goodnight, all.

11:37: The King's Speech takes Best Picture. Like all Best Pictures not directed by Martin Scorsese, it now gets to spend the next 15-20 years as the target of hate as everyone but its most ardent fans ignore its strengths and treat it with the kind of disdain that should be reserved for Dick Chaney. Congratulations!

11:33: Best Picture time. This show will end before midnight. But it's felt unusually long.

11:29: Colin Firth's acceptance speech had the same labored cadence as the climactic speech that earned him an Oscar. But he seemed genuinely touched, and you've got to like that. Portman and Firth almost made me forget about Leo.

11:26: Best Actor goes to Colin Firth for The King's Speech. And if you didn't get that one in the Oscar pool, I'm not sure why you bothered filling out an entry form.

11:24: Best Actor time allows Sandra Bullock to give one of her most charming performances -- as an Oscar presenter. Maybe she should host next year, and write the show.

11:13: And my favorite film of the year wins one award as Natalie Portman takes Best Actress for Black Swan. Some people aren't fans, but I thought she nailed it. A limited actress? Sure, like 98 percent of them. But she's as good as her material. She earns her tears.

11:07: Let's see, I could have heard from Eli Wallach or Francis Ford Coppola if they televised the lifetime achievement awards? Yeah, that would have just sucked. Thank the lord they saved me from that and replaced it with auto-tune, an ode to Hugh Jackman, and abridged performances of all five original songs. This Oscars telecast is getting more annoying all the time.

11:04: A younger, beardless James Cameron wins Best Director. Wait, check that. It's Tom Hooper for The King's Speech. It's a solid film. But this guy shouldn't have more Oscars than ... [fill in the blank]

11:02: If Anne Hathaway is getting paid by the "Wooo!" she's raking in cash.

10:57: The "In Memoriam" section is the best produced portion of the night. Somehow they convinced everyone not to clap during the tribute, or they managed to silence it. It was always awkward listening to the applause rise and fall throughout while trying not to completely, you know, die.

10:47: Randy Newman wins Best Original Song for Toy Story 3. Love his acceptance speeches. It's just those darn songs I can't stand.

10:43: Florence Welch steps in for Dido to sing "If I Rise," from 127 Hours, my least favorite song in that movie. ("Festival" is the best use of a song from that film and the entire year.) No commentary except to say that I'm wearing out "Cosmic Love" by Florence and the Machine recently.

10:36: Best Film Editing goes to The Social Network. I'm a little confused by the pairing of Best Visual Effects and Best Editing in that segment, but this one feels right, too. The Social Network's much celebrated opening scene owes as much to the editing as to Sorkin's writing. And that's boring old dialogue!

10:34: Best Visual Effects goes to Inception. Even its detractors think that one is about right.

10:27: Billy Crystal gets a standing ovation that says, "Please, please, please don't let Franco and Hathaway come back!"

10:23: Inside Job wins for Best Documentary. Great film that did something that the traditional media somehow couldn't: get to the essence of the financial crisis. As an added benefit we get to avoid all the "What Will Banksy Do?" bullshit.

10:21: Highlight of the night so far: Joel Coen looking utterly bored in the presence of Oprah Winfrey.

10:19: In an effort to stay hip, the Oscars goes auto-tune. It's Kesha's favorite part of the show.

10:15: It's Best Documentary Short and Best Live Action Short time. If you're a movie buff and you haven't seen any of these, now you know why the AMPAS is afraid to nominate "art films" that the three-times-a-year moviegoer haven't seen. I might as well be watching the Polka Awards right now. Out of touch.

10:12: "...and he madeout with my cohost ... in a movie." Did Michael Scott write this?

10:03: "Please let this be the last time I hear a Randy Newman song." Words I've been saying for 15 years.

10:00: And it's Alice in Wonderland, following up The Wolfman winning for Best Makeup. Who says movies that premiere in the barren wasteland that is February and March can't win Oscars.

9:59: Best Costume Design: Would love to see this go to I Am Love. But I fear Alice in Wonderland.

9:55: It appears James Franco's instructions for hosting the Oscars were "smile and look pretty."

9:50: Best Sound Editing goes to (BWWWARRRM!) Inception, because even the AMPAS isn't sure what the difference is between sound editing and mixing.

9:48: Best Sound Mixing goes to (BWWWARRRRM!) Inception. Second win for the film, and this time around Christopher Nolan is called "mighty." If you're keeping score, Nolan is a mighty master.

9:44: Best Original Score goes to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for The Social Network. Well deserved. A huge part of that film's mood. Tonight Reznor will fuck his wife like an animal.

9:36: Christian Bale wins Best Supporting Actor and delivers an acceptance speech that was a lot like his performance: a bit messy, a bit much, but with a few special moments.

9:30: Best Supporting Actor ... Nothing would make me happier than to see John Hawkes win this.

9:27: Russell Brand translating for Helen Mirren. Genius. I wish they'd been granted Kirk Douglas' stage time. That had potential.

9:25: Anne Hathaway finally brings talent to the hosting gig with a powerful, impressive ode to ... Hugh Jackman? Who wrote this ceremony?

9:19: David Seidler wins Best Original Screenplay for The King's Speech. Reaching the stage he struggles to find the microphone. Irony noted.

9:15: Aaron Sorkin wins Best Adapted Screenplay. Poised acceptance speech. Heartfelt. Crisp. Packed with words. It's like it was written by Aar--. Never mind.

9:13: Honestly, if this is all it takes to be an Oscar host, the AMPAS can start recruiting from QVC.

9:07: Surprising no one, Toy Story 3 wins Best Animated Feature. I haven't seen it, but it's hard for me to imagine I'll enjoy it more than How To Train Your Dragon. I'll watch the Academy's favorite animated film if you watch mine.

9:01: "It's about selling motion pictures." Melissa Leo finishes her acceptance speech with the most honest line of the night.

8:59: Melissa Leo drops and f-bomb and thanks the AMPAS board of directors. Two things you don't normally see in an acceptance speech.

8:58: Melissa Leo wins Best Supporting Actress. She'd feel a lot more confident right now if her name hadn't been read by a guy more than a decade older than the Academy Awards.

8:56: Kirk Douglas pulls an Oscar filibuster. Announce the winner already.

8:55: Kirk Douglas looks great for a guy my mom thought died 20 years ago.

8:49: The winner for Best Cinematography, Wally Pfister, thanks his "master" Christopher Nolan. The image of him in leather with a ball gag in his mouth is almost as frightening as the reality that Roger Deakins has never won this award.

8:47: And Alice in Wonderland takes Best Art Direction. That's exactly one more Oscar than that picture deserves.

8:45: Before Tom Hanks can present the award for Art Direction, we take two flashbacks to Gone With the Wind and Titanic. Pay no attention to the previous year in movies, kids.

8:42: I haven't seen an opening that limp since Jason Segel in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Not a promising start.

8:41: So far the Oscars have given us too much Ben Mankiewicz and too much of the hosts' families.

8:38: The ending was flat, but the opening montage with James Franco and Anne Hathaway was worth it for the the "junk bag" bit in The Fighter segment.

8:32: I'm not crazy about the past year in movies, but I dug the opening montage anyway. I love movies.

8:29: Bring on the real show. Truly, I'm just looking at the list of nominees for the first time.

8:23: Halle Berry must be a terminator sent from the future to destroy us. Flawless.

8:18: Melissa Leo's dress reminds me of the Flying Elvises in Honeymoon in Vegas.

8:13: Nicole Kidman says she's "been in this career for a while now." Her forehead, not so much.

8:09: Ben Mankiewicz returns. Millions of Americans rush to the bathroom.

8:07: Goodness. How Sandra Bullock's life has changed since last year's Oscars.

8:02: Natalie Portman looks worn out by the whole awards season bullshit.

7:58: Just made the mistake of flipping back to E! for a moment. It's so fitting that Ryan Seacrest might replace Larry King: How can two people who make money as interviewers be so fucking terrible at it?

7:52: Geoffery Rush is looking like Mr. Garrison on South Park, mmmkay.

7:41: "It's the first time I've been back in the courtroom since A Time to Kill." Matthew McConaughey just said that like he was Raymond Burr. Can't wait, Matt.

7:38: Scarlett Johansson's hair says, "I had sex in the limo on the way here."

7:34: The moment everyone has been waiting for: Ben Mankiewicz!

7:28: The question for Cate Blanchett shouldn't be "who are you wearing?" but "what are you wearing?" She looks like she raided the wardrobe closet from the original Star Trek TV series, and then mixed it with the magic mirror from Snow White. It's odd.

7:15: I love Russell Brand. Love him. If given the opportunity to sleep with a member of the Perry-Brands, I'd have to form a pros and cons list to decide.

7:06: Jesse Eisenberg on the Oscars: "It's like the Super Bowl, but I've never played football so this is as close as I'll get." Quote of the young night so far.

7:05: Hailee Steinfeld is terrific. Poised. Cute. Thoughtful. And willing to be herself. She's everything Miley Cyrus has always pretended to be.

7:03: OK, ABC is on. Let's get this thing started ...

7:00ish: Coverage will begin sometime around the beginning of ABC's red carpet nonsense.

I considered live-tweeting the Oscars. I considered just watching the darn thing without commentary. I considered not watching the Oscars at all (but only briefly). But you know what, I like watching the Academy Awards and I enjoy the live-blogging format, which thanks to Twitter and Facebook is now old school. So, what the heck, it's tradition. Let's do this thing!

Watch Me Grow: The Day I Became a Woman

2011-02-27T13:58:00.001-05:00

[This is a contribution to the Iranian Film Blogathon, hosted by Sheila O’Malley of The Sheila Variations, which is meant to honor the imprisoned Iranian director Jafar Panahi by raising awareness about Iranian cinema.]

As the title implies, Marzieh Makhmalbaf’s The Day I Became a Woman (2000) is about transitions. Made up of three short stories that are linked by theme more than by narrative, the film is about a 9-year-old girl who wants to play, a 20-something wife on a bicycle who wants to ride and an elderly woman being pushed around in a cart who wants to buy. What these women have in common is that their existence at the end of the day will be different than when it began, or at least it could be. One of the characters has change forced upon her, one of the characters wills change into her life and one of these characters is granted change as a reward for survival. Together their stories form a triptych depicting the unfortunate lifecycle of the Iranian woman, who between two too-short lives of relative free will is confined by dress and cultural expectations.

Hava
The film’s first chapter is about the 9-year-old girl. Or perhaps I should say almost-9. Hava (Fatemeh Cherag Akhar) wakes up on her birthday to be told by her grandmother that she is now a woman, and that with womanhood come restrictions. Now Hava must wear the chador. Now Hava cannot play with her friend, an orphan boy. Of these changes, the chador is incidental to Hava – it has no significance, no symbolism. Not yet. But being prohibited from playing with her friend is unconscionable. She begs her mother and grandmother to reconsider, and at last they agree to release her on a technicality: Hava is free to play for one hour until noon, the exact time of her birth, but then she’ll have to accept her womanhood and all the rules that go with it.

Set free, Hava charts her remaining time with a tall slender stick poked into the ground, watching the stick’s shadow growing ever shorter as noon closes in. Hava is chronicling not just the end of her playtime but the end of her childhood. And yet as the story moves along, it’s clear that Hava is nothing more than a little girl. We can see it in the delicate way in which she inserts the stick into the ground, just like her grandmother taught her – a slightly uncertain new trick. We can see it in the way she wades into the sea to play with a plastic windup toy, giving not a moment’s thought to how she’ll soak her dress. And we can see it in the way she shares candy with her friend – playfully running a lollipop around on her lips, plopping the lollipop in her mouth and then into his and back again, and tilting her head from side to side in bursts of awkward energy.

When “womanhood” comes for Hava, she doesn’t resist it, but that’s because she doesn’t realize the full implications of that transformation. Still, there’s a touching urgency to her playtime, like a kid trying to hang on to the last day of summer. Alas, this is a summer she’ll never enjoy again. When she shares her candy with her friend, he’s behind bars: confined to his room until he finishes his schoolwork. But we never forget that his imprisonment is temporary. The restrictions now being imposed on Hava’s life will be unrelenting.

Ahoo
The film’s second chapter shows just how difficult it is to escape from the restrictions of Iranian womanhood. It begins with a stirring image of a man on horseback, the camera moving laterally with the rider as he points his horse diagonally into the distance. (Films often give us riders going left or right, or forward or backward, but rarely are riders captured moving toward the corners of the frame. The result is an effect not too far from depth-stretching 3-D.) The man rides with urgency, shouting a name, “Ahoo! Ahoo!” Ahoo (Shabnam Toloui), we soon learn, is his wife. And she’s riding, too – a bicycle. The question is why? According to the dialogue of others, Ahoo is in a bicycle race, and indeed much of the film features her pedaling amidst a pelaton of chador-clad riders, surging forward, then falling back, then surging forward again. But thematically speaking, Ahoo seems less determined to get somewhere than to leave something behind: her husband and her marriage. Her husband repeatedly demands that she give up the race and return home. He brings a mullah who divorces them as she rides. He sends back tribal elders and Ahoo’s brothers, all of whom urge her to “get back to her life.” But Ahoo is committed. She wants out.

What’s striking about this chapter is how much we discern from so very little. Ahoo has about three lines of dialogue, each of them one or two words long. She never says she’s unhappy in her marriage. She never says what, if anything this ride means to her – and indeed it’s quite possible that the only thing she enjoys about riding the “devil’s mount,” as the mullah calls her bicycle, is that it allows her to defy her husband. But each time she pedals ahead, we sense her will. The men on horseback come and go, and Ahoo, under her own power, rides on. But can she get away? The entire film takes place on Kish Island, and the Ahoo chapter is dominated by shots of the riders pedaling their bikes within view of the shoreline. Because the bike race seems to have no obvious start or end point, or markers charting their progress, it could be read that the riders are going in circles – pedaling ahead but getting nowhere.

Indeed, that seems to be Ahoo’s fate. After several attempts to coerce Ahoo into giving up the race, some of the male elders set up a roadblock. They allow another rider to pass, but when Ahoo rides up to them, they force her to stop. The camera, however, moves ahead with the other riders, looking back at a cloud of dust where the men on horseback surround Ahoo. Do they force her from her bike? Do they drag her back to the life they demand? Or does she manage to ride on? The film leaves it a mystery, but the persistence of the men suggests they won’t rest until Ahoo obeys. And as the camera moves on up the road without her, the life Ahoo wanted seems to slip away.

Hoora
What will become of Hava and Ahoo? Makhmalbaf suggests one possibility with the closing chapter. Hoora (Azizeh Sedighi) is an elderly woman who for reasons that aren’t made clear has just received a large inheritance. Did her husband die? A brother? We can only speculate, but clearly Hoora is alone. Blissfully alone. In the opening of the final chapter, Hoora is wheeled around by an African boy who helps her make a long list of purchases – a refrigerator, a washing machine, a bed, linens, a sectional couch and so on. These are things, Hoora says, that she’s always wanted. Her inheritance gives her the financial means to have them, but maybe so does her singlehood. Hoora’s life is her own, and it’s as if she wants to make her own home for herself after a life of playing servant to someone else’s wants and needs. Hoora’s fingers are covered with strings, each of them reminders of all the things she wants to buy, each of them symbols of lifelong dreams that only now are capable of coming true.

The Hoora chapter is the most surrealistic of the three. After the shopping is done, Hoora orders her young helpers to unpack her belongings somewhere that she can see them (ostensibly in the hope that she will notice what’s missing), and so it comes to be that Hoora’s new possessions are spread out on a white sandy beach, assembled with care as if within the walls of a home. The refrigerator is stocked, the washing machine somehow works and all of the packaging disappears. It doesn’t make much sense, but it’s a nice image, and the same can be said of what happens next, when in an effort to get Hoora’s new possessions back to her home, somewhere off Kish Island, the boys load them onto small makeshift pontoons and float them out to sea. Symbolically, it’s an image that suggests liberation, as Hoora gains the freedom to float according to her whims – the same freedom Hava had until noon of her ninth birthday. But the image could also be read to suggest that Hoora is drifting into the afterlife, as if her dreams can only be answered in death. Thus the Hoora chapter, and the entire film, ends with a scene that’s bittersweet – touchingly fantastic and depressingly impossible.

As Hoora floats out into the sea, Hava arrives with her mother and watches the spectacle, trying to make sense of it. Is this her fate? And if so is it too late to escape? The Day I Became a Woman suggests Hava will have to live a long time to ever feel so free again. With a light touch, Makhmalbaf’s film makes a deep impression.

Littler Big Man: The Cowboys

2011-02-22T16:29:00.001-05:00

An actor’s voice is like an athlete’s legs. Once it goes, the magic tends to go with it. That’s why Sean Connery remained an arresting on-screen presence into his 60s and why Harrison Ford hasn’t been able to do the same. The former retained his foghorn-like voice, while the latter has sounded for years like wheezing fireplace bellows. Actors can grow gray and wrinkled, they can become hunched and rigid in their movements, but nothing reveals an actor’s age quite like a fading voice. That’s why it’s difficult to watch John Wayne in The Cowboys without feeling tinges of sadness, because by 1972 the iconic drawl that was once as thick and smooth as honey was growing thin and rough, reminding us of his mortality. (Indeed, seven years later Wayne died of stomach cancer.) And yet within the film Wayne’s raspy voice is something of a gift, first because it’s appropriate for the portrayal of an over-the-hill cattleman, and more importantly because it frees us up to appreciate Wayne’s acting.

If Wayne’s oft-imitated baritone was part of what made him so charming and so singular, it was also a handicap, preventing him from disappearing into his roles when the occasion called for it. Wayne’s booming voice often made him bigger than the character he was playing, and sometimes even bigger than the scene itself. It shook the walls and became part of the set decoration. It was the perfect voice for shooting in locations like Monument Valley, as John Ford liked to do, but in intimate scenes it could overwhelm. And so when I point out that Wayne’s Wil Anderson always seems smaller that room he’s standing in, that’s what I mean, and the relative softness of Wayne’s voice is the reason why. When Anderson has a drink with his buddy Anse (Slim Pickens), or sits in the classroom of Miss Price (Allyn Ann McLerie), or has a quiet conversation with his adoring wife (Sarah Cunningham) – great moments, all of them – he’s the most imposing figure in the room, as Wayne’s characters always were, but he doesn’t hover over them like a Western titan, which makes his performance here pleasantly unusual. In The Cowboys, Wayne does some of the best listening of his career, and the fact that his voice isn’t echoing off the walls when someone else is talking might have a little to do with that. Regardless, Wayne is something in this film that he almost never was over his distinguished career, possibly because we wouldn’t allow it: vulnerable.

It’s a new outfit, but he wears it well. For my money, this is the best performance of Wayne’s career, and it comes in a film that’s vastly underrated. Based on a novel by William Dale Jennings, who helped write the screenplay, The Cowboys is the story of a cattleman who in a last-ditch effort to drive his horse and cattle herds 400 miles to market is forced to hire 11 rookie cowboys – emphasis on boys. His hired hands are school kids, baby-faced teens familiar with open books not open ranges. But in an area vacated by men with gold fever they’re the only workforce available. So Wil begrudgingly signs them up, and over the course of the journey they learn how to be men, and Wil rediscovers what it means to be a father-figure and more. If that makes The Cowboys sound like a Disney movie, it might explain why this film is rarely mentioned among Wayne’s best, as sentiment tends to be the enemy of critical respect. But if you can avoid the knee-jerk reaction to associate a movie about children with childishness, The Cowboys proves its worth, mostly thanks to Wayne, but also due to the unfussy direction of Mark Rydell, a sneaky-good screenplay, the best John Williams score that you don’t know by heart, a charming supporting performance by Roscoe Lee Browne as trail cook Jebediah Nightlinger and a chilling supporting turn by Bruce Dern as the villain with no name.

(Spoilers ahead, in case that’s necessary.)

Dern might seem an unlikely Western villain, and maybe that’s why his performance is so imposing. Scrawny and unkempt with curly hair that hangs to his shoulders and a cowboy hat with the front of the brim bent up toward the sky, Dern’s character doesn’t appear to be the strongest man in his gang or the smartest, but he’s vicious from head to toe and utterly unhinged, which is why he’s in charge. What makes him particularly dangerous is that he’s desperate to prove himself, even if that means picking on terrified kids. The standoff between Anderson and Dern’s “Long Hair” is the scene people usually talk about when they talk about The Cowboys, because it's one of the rare times that one of Wayne’s characters is killed on screen -- shot in the back, no less. (“They’ll hate you for this,” Wayne reported told Dern, referring to his audience of adoring fans. “But they’ll love me in Berkeley,” Dern responded, in reference to Wayne’s support of the Vietnam War.) But the scene deserves to be appreciated beyond its value as trivia because it includes some of the film’s best images. Before the brawl, there’s a terrific medium shot that puts Long Hair at the right edge of the frame, ordering Anderson to pick up the gun belt at his feet and walk it over to him, and Anderson at the left edge, standing statue-still, refusing to comply. A little while later, Rydell captures Long Hair and one of Anderson’s young cowboys in a creepy close-up that frames their faces in parallel – a look of pure madness on one side and pure innocence on the other. And then there’s the close-up of Long Hair after he’s gunned down Anderson, his eyes wide, his mouth open, his face bloody – a chilling portrait of evil and cowardice.

In movies like these, evil and cowardice are meant to be vanquished, and as before the only people around to do the dirty work are Anderson’s young cowboys. Their mission, as they state it, is to get back the herd and finish the job, but the reality is that over the closing minutes of the film Wayne’s cowboys become the Magnificent Eleven, picking off men from Long Hair’s gang one-by-one until a final climactic shootout in which they lure the final members of the gang into a kill zone. It’s the most problematic portion of the film, less because it strains credulity and than because it asks us to delight in watching these boys become killers. The first time I saw this movie, at the age of 11 or so, I found the whole thing exhilarating. At that age I was drawn to anything that suggested that kids could mix it up with adults and come out on top. But more than 20 years later the bigger picture is impossible to ignore. Over the course of the film, the wary boys become confident young men, which is admirable, but as a result they also stop being boys far too soon, which is heartbreaking. As “Long Hair” meets his death, Rydell stares into each boy’s face and it’s obvious that while triumph is theirs innocence has lost. Through their metamorphosis, Anderson’s death and Wayne’s weakening voice, The Cowboys is a poignant reminder that eventually all good things must come to an end.

The Times They Are a-Changin’: Chisum

2011-02-20T13:39:00.000-05:00

The opening titles sequence of Andrew V. McLaglen’s Chisum could stand alone as a modest yet effective short film. Constructing a loose narrative about the trials of a Western cattle drive through a series of static, painted-canvas images brought to life via quick cuts, whip pans and zooms, the sequence plays like a collaboration between C.M. Russell and Ken Burns. Its purpose is to serve as both prelude and reflection – showing how the film’s titular character came to be a man of wealth and reputation – but it entertains on its own merits: evoking the tumult of the cattle drive, the chaos of a lightning storm on the prairie and the perilousness of a clash with Indians. It’s set to the “Ballad of John Chisum,” which combines the score of Dominic Frontiere with the vocals of Merle Haggard, who sings – more like Vincent-Price-raps – about a guy who rode toward the Pecos to find out where he belonged, and it ends with an image of that man on horseback, standing proudly atop a hill and looking down on his New Mexico estate. At that point, the canvas dissolves into the celluloid image, and the painted figure who previously had resembled John Wayne now actually is John Wayne – as John Chisum, of course.

It’s a romantic introduction, one that conjures up nostalgia for Western history and for the Western itself. The initial shot of Wayne, framed in profile and facing to the left, nods at his supremacy – king of the Western hill – while suggesting a man looking into his vast past, contemplating all that it took to rise to the top. Chisum isn’t about a man at a crossroads. It’s about a man who long ago charted his course and now feels the rest of the world catching up, trying to unseat him. “Thinking about the beginning?” asks Ben Johnson’s James Pepper, riding up to Wayne’s Chisum. “And before,” Chisum answers back. Wayne and Johnson are in character, but they might as well be talking as actors – two men who helped blaze a cinematic trail that inspired others to follow in their boot prints; two men who from their elevated position can see that their way of life can’t last much longer. Chisum (1970) was made in the aftermath of Sergio Leone’s “Man with No Name” trilogy (1964-66) and was released a year after Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, films that redefined the Western genre, and it’s clear McLaglen and screenwriter Andrew J. Fenady know which way the wind is blowing. “Everything’s different now,” Pepper says. “Not everything,” responds Chisum, gesturing to some grazing deer, although the line seems designed as a nod toward Wayne’s staying power. “Most everything,” Pepper corrects. “Well,” Chisum says, puffing on a cigar, “things usually change for the better,” and although he sounds sincere, he also comes across like a man who knows that resistance is futile.

Chisum is a film straddling the fence between the old and new. The slow pan showing Chisum’s sprawling homestead amongst the photogenic hills affirms that an appreciation of the scenery is still core to the Western going into the 1970s, but Chisum is also dominated by tight close-ups that suggest Leone’s influence, if not his skill. McLaglen’s brim-to-chin close-ups, in comparison to Leone’s, seem perfunctory and awkward; like someone trying to use new slang, McLaglen knows the mechanics but not the rhythms. Furthermore, many of McLaglen’s close-ups appear to be the unintended consequence of his eagerness to use quick inward and outward zooms, a technique that has negligible dramatic effect but does a fine job of drawing attention to the filmmaking, which is precisely the point. It isn’t enough anymore, Chisum suggests, for a Western to unfold through long shots backdropped by Monument Valley or some other picturesque location, and so McLaglen spices up the filmmaking, as if determined to inject hipness into the Wayne Western. The result is a film that seems unnecessarily busy at times, but not to the point of alienating fans of the traditional Western. In fact, many of Chisum’s pleasures are the result of McLaglen sticking to the tried and true, reveling in the old-fashioned thrill of fast-galloping horses, outbursts of gunfire and the sight of Wayne’s Chisum reaching his fist back toward the camera before slamming his meaty paw into the villain’s jaw.

The film’s signature scene is purely old-school, too, one that John Ford would have been proud to shoot. Late in the picture, with war broken out in Lincoln County, Chisum rides to the rescue of William “Billy the Kid” Bonney (Geoffrey Deuel) and fellow enemies of the duplicitous and conniving Lawrence Murphy (Forrest Tucker) by driving a herd of cattle into town. The herd stampedes through the barricade meant to keep Chisum out and sends Murphy’s men running for their lives while Chisum, Pepper, Pat Garrett (Glenn Corbett) and the other rescuers ride in on their horses, as if surfing the cattle tsunami, firing rifles and pistols at Murphy’s skedaddling hired guns. As action scenes go, it’s a simple concept but an awesome spectacle the likes of which we just don’t see anymore. If Chisum were remade today, the stampede would more than likely be achieved via CGI, which remains a weightless and dispiriting alternative to the real thing (see: Australia). McLaglen’s stampede is overflowing with genuine chaos as the cattle flatten fences, overturn carts and knock out posts holding up storefront awnings, all while trying to keep from being trampled themselves.

The stampede is followed by a terrific shot in which Chisum, scanning the scene in search of Murphy, rides toward the camera and into a close-up that recalls the zoom in Stagecoach that introduces Wayne’s Ringo Kid. Alas, what follows that shot isn’t nearly as graceful. The ensuing fistfight between Chisum and Murphy is overlong and overdone, with both men crashing through windows, doors and anything else breakable that happens to be nearby. Making matters worse, Wayne’s stunt double appears to be several inches shorter and at least 50 pounds lighter than he is. There’s no confusing one man for the other, and so when Wayne’s double gets thrown through some stair railings and out of view and then Wayne, without a cut, stands up and charges up the stairs, it plays like comedy. A minute or two later, the scene ends with Chisum and Murphy taking a fall from a second-story balcony that leaves Murphy impaled by the tip of a trophy steer horn, and that bit of brief gore is sign enough of how the Western is changing around Wayne. If Chisum proved that Wayne could still mix it up with the best of them in 1970, it also made it clear that his days at the top were numbered.

Celebrating Three Years of The Cooler

2011-02-09T11:59:00.041-05:00

So it’s been three years of doing this blogging thing. And, wow, this past year went by too quickly. Glancing back at 2010’s anniversary post, I see that last February, too, I made reference to a busy day job keeping me from my (healthy) movie obsession, and here we are again. The good news this time is that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and so I feel safe predicting that 2011 will include a noticeable increase in activity around these here parts, which is great because too often this past year I felt frustratingly disconnected -- from the blog and even from cinema (I think those things are related).

And yet, now that I look back, I have to say that given the significant time constraints – and, as always, let me make it clear that I’m grateful to have a cool and demanding day job that rewards all of the time I put into it – I’m quite pleased with what I was able to do in this space over the past 365 days. I didn’t write as often as I would like – or, more to the point, I didn’t get as much time to ruminate and create as I would like – but somehow there was time enough to continue The Conversations series with Ed Howard, and to finish off my coverage of ESPN’s 30 for 30 series, and to pay tribute to the King of Cool (with the help of various talented bloggers from the cyberhood) with the Steve McQueen Blog-a-thon. I also got to meet some fellow bloggers face-to-face for the first time – Ali Arikan and the Olsons (Kevin and Troy). And in online form I got to hang out in Dennis Cozzalio’s Tree House with Dennis, Sheila O’Malley and Jim Emerson, which was fun. All things considered, it was a good year.

But the year ahead will be better. Last year I got to make my first video essay, and I’d like to do a few more video installments this year. I’d also like to be less obedient to the current release schedule in order to write about films from years past – although going to the theater is such a relaxing part of my average weekend that commentary on new releases will always be a staple here. I’d like to sprinkle in a few more brief posts now and then, and when time is tight I’ll try to overcome my tendency to wait for a rainy day that might never come and instead I will write what I can, even if it's frustratingly brief. I’d like to host some sort of blogathon-type event, and perhaps more importantly I’d like to take part in the many such celebrations put on by fellow bloggers, as it pained me to miss Tony Dayoub’s David Crongenberg blogathon, and Adam Zanzie and Ryan Kelly’s Steven Spielberg blogathon and the almost-current (and past) For the Love of Film blogathon(s). And I’d like to meet more bloggers face to face – a quick trip to NYC this spring would go a long way in that regard – and also be better about interacting online (in comments sections, on Twitter, via e-mail, whatever), debating the issues and celebrating the reviews that hit the sweet spot. I’m excited about it all!

I hope you’ll join me.

Sincere thanks to everyone who has supported The Cooler, through thoughtful comments, through links via social media, or just by reading. And thanks to my fellow bloggers who inspire me over and over again with their own work. Let's have another great year.

North by Northwest Didn't Always Have Direction

2011-02-07T20:49:00.000-05:00

“There are 20 different ways of doing a movie, but if you know you’re doing a film for Hitchcock, the villains should all be suave, there’s very little violence, [and] there should be some wit, even when you’re killing somebody.”

Those are the words of screenwriter Ernest Lehman, reflecting on his experiences creating North by Northwest, as anthologized in Conversations With the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age at the American Film Institute – an unfailingly satisfying read that I pick up off the bookshelf every few months to savor just a few pages at a time. Regular readers probably know this isn’t the first time I’ve quoted that anthology here at The Cooler, and it almost certainly won’t be the last. Page after page I find something enlightening: sometimes it’s a bit of trivia, sometimes it’s a well-told anecdote, but usually it’s a needed dose of perspective.

And that said, I turn it over to Ernest Lehman, circa 1976, discussing the creation of his only original screenplay, North by Northwest (emphasis mine):

“It was fun in a way, but it was extremely difficult. I recall having tried to quit that picture at least a dozen times, unknown to Mr. Hitchcock, who was off shooting Vertigo while I was writing the first 70-odd pages. I never knew what the hell I was going to write next. I used to go to my office and be scared to death because I just didn’t know what came next. I would write an opening scene and then the next scene. Some days I wouldn’t write anything. It was a lonesome and scary experience because I didn’t have anyone to talk to. Occasionally I would talk to Hitch, who was very helpful as we would bounce ideas off each other. Then I would go back to my office at MGM and call my agent and tell him, ‘I quit.’

“One day Hitchcock said, ‘I’ve always wanted to do a chase across the face of Mount Rushmore.’ Terrific, I thought, and wrote it down. He told me all the ideas he wanted to do, and I wrote them down. Lots and lots of ideas. He wanted to do a sequence with the longest dolly shot in history, taking place at the assembly line of the Ford Motor Company. It would starts at the beginning of the assembly line. The camera follows a car being put together before it’s driven off the assembly line and they discover there’s a body in the backseat. He always wanted to do a scene in the General Assembly of the United Nations. Somebody is giving a speech to the Assembly and refused to continue until the delegate from Peru wakes up. So someone taps the delegate from Peru, and he falls over dead. I wrote these ideas down, but the only idea that is actually in the picture is the chase across Mount Rushmore. I also wrote out a list of possible protagonists, like a Frank Sinatra-type singer, or a famous sports announcer, or a newspaper man or a Madison Avenue advertising executive. I decided the easiest for me to write was the Madison Avenue advertising executive, not because I knew any, but because I know how to stereotype him.

“Then we moved over to Hitchcock’s office at Paramount where he was working on Vertigo. We wasted a lot of time talking about the pleasantries of life. One day he told me something rather crucial, that a newspaper man in New York had told him that something like the CIA had once invented a decoy, a nonexistent agent, to throw the scent off a real agent. I thought that sounded good. Our hero, whoever he is, could be mistaken for this decoy. That I liked. I wrote the script page by page, scene by scene, never knowing what was coming next. The only thing I knew for sure was that we wanted to end up on Mount Rushmore, which is my least favorite part of the film, though most people remember it for that. I got only about one-tenth of the way through the story when Hitch gathered all the MGM executives together and told them everything we had. At the point where he ran out of story outline, he told them he had to go and that he’d see them at the preview. That was it.

“Then Hitchcock arrived at MGM and he signed Cary Grant and fixed a starting date. Here I am, sweating my way through the first draft, and I still didn’t know what the whole third act would be. I was so desperate I called Hitch and said I need to see him. I think he could sense how things were because he didn’t say, ‘Come down to my office.’ He said, ‘I’ll come down to your office.’ We met and I told him the truth. I said, ‘I’m totally stuck. I haven’t written a word in two weeks. It’s a disaster. What do we do?’ He said, ‘We’ll call in a novelist to sit with us and kick around some ideas.’ I said, ‘What will MGM say? I’m supposed to be writing this movie.’ He said, ‘I’ll tell them it’s my fault.’ I felt very guilty. We went down to his office and he talked about which novelist to get. It was a very gloomy scene.

“But I’m sitting there, and it’s not as if I wasn’t listening to him, but in the middle of this gloomy conversation I said, ‘Suppose he pulls out a gun and shoots him. Fake bullets. In a minute I’ll figure out why.’ My brain must have been working for months on this without my knowing it, because suddenly it became clear to me what the third act would be. … I left the office and never again was there any mention of bringing anyone else in.”

Incredible story, isn’t it? And what strikes me reading it is how much any screenwriter or filmmaker would be obliterated for saying anything similar today. Starting the screenplay without knowing what it’s about? Picking the dramatic hook after you’ve already started writing? Figuring out the ending long after you've begun? Writing an entire film to justify a director’s desire to film a single scene? Sounds like hackwork, doesn’t it? But who among us would call North by Northwest hackwork?

North by Northwest succeeds for so many reasons: because of Hitchcock’s tremendous eye and sense of dramatic tension, because of fun performances by Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason and Martin Landau, because of Bernard Herrmann’s awesome score, and because Lehman’s final screenplay was tremendous, no matter how he got there. The lesson is one we should already know but so easily forget: process is irrelevant. It’s what ends up on the screen that counts.

The Conversations: True Grit

2011-02-04T06:57:00.000-05:00

As many if not most of you already know, the latest edition of The Conversations has been posted to The House Next Door -- several days ago, actually. In this month's edition, Ed Howard and I discuss the Coens' True Grit, and also Henry Hathaway's 1969 version, famously starring John Wayne. Both films are based, to some degree or another, on a Clinton Portis novel that neither Ed nor I has read. Thankfully, some readers of our discussion have read the novel, and so the benefit of being tardy in posting this link is that I can tell you that the comments section is very much worth reading. Also, for what it's worth, if you ever avoid The Conversations due to their length, this edition is relatively short. You'll still kill a tree printing it out, but a smaller tree. Anyway, my delayed posting here isn't indicative of a lack of enthusiasm, so if you haven't yet, get on over to The House Next Door and dive into the discussion.

Click here for an archive of The Conversations.