While "No Country For Old Men," a movie I have deep reservations about, seems poised to sweep the Oscars, I think another problematic contender is gaining momentum. And the way it has been packaged and received by audiences tells you a lot about the "quality" film business at this moment.
"There Will Be Blood," loosely adapted from a novel by Sinclair Lewis (that I’m guessing nobody has read in at least fifty years), is the type of sprawling but modestly budgeted period piece that the high-end movie-going audience in this country seems to relish. It deals with something many of us know a little about but practically all of us have an opinion, even if it’s an opinion based on mythology. And that is the rise of a megalomaniacal oil tycoon. It features a towering performance by one of our most widely acknowledged eccentrics, Daniel Day Lewis. And it's crafted with exquisite attention to detail, at least for most of its running time.
Its virtues go beyond just craft. At its heart is a seamless interplay between actor Lewis and writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson. The character at the movie's core and the environment around him has an obsessive focus that all totaled amount to a vision of another planet. It's just that this planet happens to be one we lived in, nearly a century ago.
When the camera is on him (Lewis) the movie is mesmerizing. His involvement with the character goes beyond anything in the script and makes Jason Robards's canny remark, "if it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage," almost aside from the point. We can't shake this guy from our minds, even if we wanted to.
Then there's the director, who's been called a "master" with only a handful of films to his credit. Not yet 40, Anderson is a favorite among young Hollywood. He won a major following after "Boogie Nights," the last word on the porno business which grew like weeds in Hollywood's back yard during the early 70s.
Located mainly in the sprawling San Fernando Valley, many commentators took a perverse pleasure in porno's ups and downs, because in a way they mirrored the "legitimate" industry to which it aspired. Anderson got that, long before it became commonplace. He caught its hard side, soft side, and almost comic pretensions. The movie was amazing for its energy, performances and twisty story lines. It capped the career of Burt Reynolds and arguably gave birth to that of Mark Wahlberg, Heather Graham, John C. Reilly, Don Cheadle, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Not bad.
Anderson has wonderful instincts for actors. He knows what to do with them, and better, how to create character through striking visuals. Most of his films (see "Hard Eight," "Magnolia," and "Punch Drunk Love") resolve in ways that leave us irritated because he seems not to care about resolving stories in ways that leave us satisfied. I don't think that's any excuse for downright incoherence (which I think he is guilty of, over and over), but the reality is, he's managed to get a pass from a devoted following that has a taste for his taste. Both here and abroad.
"Blood" is no exception to the Anderson canon. As narrative it shows signs of hopping the tracks about halfway in, when after a sterling hour or so, Lewis's oil man becomes harder and harder to read. He seems to lose focus on a child he adopted in the early going. He'd used the child as a prop to move his career along, but their decline as a family is irregularly detailed. Small fissures in the narrative become chasms as we get to the last chapter, thirty years on, to the point where I overheard several people wondering whether the film was missing a reel. But no, I think Anderson made choices that put coherence on the back burner. I think he figured he'd done enough to earn the melodramatic punches in the last reel, and that smoother transitions would have flirted with cliché. I disagree.
The deepest revelations of character can be married to the best designed story lines. John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Francis Ford Coppola have shown us how it's done. Anderson is lucky that the art house crowd has allowed him considerable latitude to indulge himself. He may even get rewarded for it on Oscar night. But for me, this time, the blood ran cold.
Foreign Film Alert: I don't know how it happened that the Cannes winner, "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," failed to get an Oscar nomination. To summarize the plot, which follows one young woman's attempt to help another get an abortion, is to sell the film way short of its suspense and irony. Don't worry: the unpleasant aspects are deftly handled, so the squirm factor is minimized. The impact comes from indelible characters and a window into a society (Romania under the grip of its last dictator) with issues we can understand even if we have no knowledge about the country. Romania seems to have come out of the lost movie closet, the way Spain did after Franco went.
You may not see "4 Weeks" in theaters but get the DVD, sit back and let it work its spell.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Crime and the Movies
Crime and the movies have gone hand in hand since Edwin S. Porter made "The Great Train Robbery" in 1903. So it should come as no surprise that movie theaters were filled with the unlawful and their minions in 2007. But the range and quality was surprising. So let's review the more noteworthy from last year's wild bunch, even if, at this point, most of them are destined for screenings in your living room.
"Gone Baby Gone." An Oscar contender for Amy Ryan's fiery performance as a mother whose only redeeming quality is her raging life force. "Gone" was generally overlooked by audiences when it was released in early fall.
It's a nerve jangling, twisty thriller about a kidnap/murder that takes no prisoners in depicting lower middle class life in Boston's south bay. You rarely get such unvarnished portrayals of social disarray, even in low budget genre pieces, but Ben Affleck's focused direction translates Dennis Lehane's dependable novel with true grit.
A key sequence, the cause of much confusion, is repeated a little too often, mainly to present "new" information, but this is a minor caveat; the material stays true to core beliefs about its people. The cast including Casey Affleck, Michelle Monahan, Morgan Freeman. And the inimitable Ed Harris is uniformly up to the challenge. This is the sort of movie where even the smallest roles stick to your guts.
"Michael Clayton." I think the temptation among critics was to credit Tony Gilroy and George Clooney for getting a smart movie made, then to overlook the more subtle and complex virtues of their good lawyer/ bad lawyer story. Thankfully, the Academy, which generally looks after its own, recognized Clooney's complex performance as well as writer/director Gilroy's smart material for what they are: terrific adult entertainment. These days it takes a major star and a proven writer for any studio to get behind material with such a low body count, so we have to be thankful that they persisted.
Clooney is an unsuspecting fall guy in amoral Sidney Pollack's law firm, Tom Wilkerson is a partner losing his mind, and Tilda Swinton, as the opposition, sweats more than any woman ever in expensive business wear. In the process she becomes excellent competition for Amy Ryan's Oscar bid. Gilroy ratchets up the tension with equal measures of precision and glee. The last few minutes show us once again, why Clooney is both a movie star and a terrific actor.
"Until the Devil Knows You're Dead." I'm not sure what, if anything, this wallow in family squalor amounts to, but its obsessive focus holds you in its grip from beginning to end. Credit that to 83 year old director Sidney Lumet, who delivers every lurid moment with matter of fact, but unflinching candor. The relationship between brothers Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke deteriorates in nano seconds after an attempted robbery of their parents' jewelry store goes horribly awry. What's surprising is how many others they take down with them. This isn't up to the level of say, John Huston's "Asphalt Jungle," but those drawn to the dark side will not be disappointed.
"American Gangster." In any other recent year, director Ridley Scott, writer Steve Zaillian, Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, would have swept critics off their feet with this intelligent depiction of a drug dealer who takes his cues from corporate American. Instead they compared it unfavorably to "The Godfather," or complained about insufficient screen time between the two leads.
But Washington delivered a restrained, thoughtful performance and Crowe, as his nemesis, playing of all things, a homely Jewish detective, gave a new spin to the genre.
"Gangster" isn't so much an epic, as a study in contrasting personal styles. It's a tortoise and hare race, vividly observed. And while the high end production values may be a bit showy, and the symmetry of the opposites (honest scumbag cop versus family loyal dope pusher) might have appeared superficially predictable, new and rich details abound. Also, keep an eye out for Ruby Dee in a small, but compelling part as a mom who keeps her mouth shut until she can’t.
"No Country For Old Men." I wish I could flow with the wave of critical enthusiasm for the Coen brothers latest, I found it a far cry from "Fargo." In fact I liked "Miller's Crossing," another indulgent, but livelier hodge podge, much more satisfying. The first half of "No Country," meticulously detailed and tense, doesn't really speak to the second, where the narrative flies apart in a hail of unlikely plot turns. Wily wrongdoers suddenly turn stupid, while robotic killers become psychic.
Tommy Lee Jones provides a stoic narration, a novelistic device that's supposed to ground the movie with a "theme," but his part is only tangential. For all the impact he has on events he might as well have been reading off screen. And while graduate student types are likely to proclaim the Coen's methods as the stuff of art (largely because they so self consciously depart from audience expectations,) don’t believe it.
"Country" will be the cause of much late night babble in dorms and coffee houses, but the results of that are likely to be little more than bleary eyes and missed morning classes. And I know it was taken from a novel. Novels are different.
"Gone Baby Gone." An Oscar contender for Amy Ryan's fiery performance as a mother whose only redeeming quality is her raging life force. "Gone" was generally overlooked by audiences when it was released in early fall.
It's a nerve jangling, twisty thriller about a kidnap/murder that takes no prisoners in depicting lower middle class life in Boston's south bay. You rarely get such unvarnished portrayals of social disarray, even in low budget genre pieces, but Ben Affleck's focused direction translates Dennis Lehane's dependable novel with true grit.
A key sequence, the cause of much confusion, is repeated a little too often, mainly to present "new" information, but this is a minor caveat; the material stays true to core beliefs about its people. The cast including Casey Affleck, Michelle Monahan, Morgan Freeman. And the inimitable Ed Harris is uniformly up to the challenge. This is the sort of movie where even the smallest roles stick to your guts.
"Michael Clayton." I think the temptation among critics was to credit Tony Gilroy and George Clooney for getting a smart movie made, then to overlook the more subtle and complex virtues of their good lawyer/ bad lawyer story. Thankfully, the Academy, which generally looks after its own, recognized Clooney's complex performance as well as writer/director Gilroy's smart material for what they are: terrific adult entertainment. These days it takes a major star and a proven writer for any studio to get behind material with such a low body count, so we have to be thankful that they persisted.
Clooney is an unsuspecting fall guy in amoral Sidney Pollack's law firm, Tom Wilkerson is a partner losing his mind, and Tilda Swinton, as the opposition, sweats more than any woman ever in expensive business wear. In the process she becomes excellent competition for Amy Ryan's Oscar bid. Gilroy ratchets up the tension with equal measures of precision and glee. The last few minutes show us once again, why Clooney is both a movie star and a terrific actor.
"Until the Devil Knows You're Dead." I'm not sure what, if anything, this wallow in family squalor amounts to, but its obsessive focus holds you in its grip from beginning to end. Credit that to 83 year old director Sidney Lumet, who delivers every lurid moment with matter of fact, but unflinching candor. The relationship between brothers Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke deteriorates in nano seconds after an attempted robbery of their parents' jewelry store goes horribly awry. What's surprising is how many others they take down with them. This isn't up to the level of say, John Huston's "Asphalt Jungle," but those drawn to the dark side will not be disappointed.
"American Gangster." In any other recent year, director Ridley Scott, writer Steve Zaillian, Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, would have swept critics off their feet with this intelligent depiction of a drug dealer who takes his cues from corporate American. Instead they compared it unfavorably to "The Godfather," or complained about insufficient screen time between the two leads.
But Washington delivered a restrained, thoughtful performance and Crowe, as his nemesis, playing of all things, a homely Jewish detective, gave a new spin to the genre.
"Gangster" isn't so much an epic, as a study in contrasting personal styles. It's a tortoise and hare race, vividly observed. And while the high end production values may be a bit showy, and the symmetry of the opposites (honest scumbag cop versus family loyal dope pusher) might have appeared superficially predictable, new and rich details abound. Also, keep an eye out for Ruby Dee in a small, but compelling part as a mom who keeps her mouth shut until she can’t.
"No Country For Old Men." I wish I could flow with the wave of critical enthusiasm for the Coen brothers latest, I found it a far cry from "Fargo." In fact I liked "Miller's Crossing," another indulgent, but livelier hodge podge, much more satisfying. The first half of "No Country," meticulously detailed and tense, doesn't really speak to the second, where the narrative flies apart in a hail of unlikely plot turns. Wily wrongdoers suddenly turn stupid, while robotic killers become psychic.
Tommy Lee Jones provides a stoic narration, a novelistic device that's supposed to ground the movie with a "theme," but his part is only tangential. For all the impact he has on events he might as well have been reading off screen. And while graduate student types are likely to proclaim the Coen's methods as the stuff of art (largely because they so self consciously depart from audience expectations,) don’t believe it.
"Country" will be the cause of much late night babble in dorms and coffee houses, but the results of that are likely to be little more than bleary eyes and missed morning classes. And I know it was taken from a novel. Novels are different.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Review: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
We've never seen anything quite like "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," and that alone makes it worth our attention. Based on the memoir of Dominique Bauby, a French magazine editor who suffered a massive stroke at 43, the movie employs a bold strategy that forces us to see the world from its protagonists agonized and frightening point of view. That condition, described by Bauby's intrepid doctors as "locked in" syndrome, left Bauby completely paralyzed save for vision and movement in one eye.
The movie begins with a confused awakening; blurry images and sound from a hospital room; doctors, nurses, and their conflicted and conflicting dialogue on the patient's condition. Then the patient's gradual realization that while he thinks he's talking, he's unable to say a word. For a while every moment is seen from the agonized view of Bauby's one functioning eye. A sense of dread, that we're going to spend the film's entire running time seeing through one eye, is eventually leavened by a rich series of flashbacks.
Bauby was a talented and chauvinistic editor of Elle. In addition to the gorgeous wife and kids he sported a stunning mistress and a coterie of sycophants. Even in the hospital he's attended by three wispily beautiful therapists, almost as taken with his reputation and power as his former underlings.
Imprisoned in the "diving bell" of his afflicted body, Bauby is forced to endure a procession of well meaning but helpless friends and lovers, more problematic than helpful. His only relief comes from a determined therapist who contrives a tiny escape hatch for the "butterfly" within.
Director Julian Schnabel, working from Bauby’s memoir and an inspired script by Ronald Harwood, has elected to keep the narrators diffident and unsparing "voice" intact. This is most effective in several unnerving confrontations; between aging father, (Max Von Sydow) and stricken son, dutiful wife and fearful mistress, confused friends and colleagues.
Bauby's painful struggle to re enter the flow of life is punctuated with flights of fancy that will remind some of the Javier Bardem film "The Sea Within," from a couple years back. Sardonic humor and an undiminished taste for the pleasures of the female body serve as distractions, reinforcing the character’s refusal to give in to his infirmity.
But the chosen form of storytelling is as problematic as it is problem solving. Because the film begins with Bauby already afflicted we don’t get involved in the ebb and flow his prior life. That life is represented in snippets of recollection; vividly shot, but not quite enough to win our complete sympathy. By eschewing traditional narrative Schnabel and Harwood leave a bit of a vacuum. The movie captures your attention more often than your heart.
I mention this deficit mainly by way of comparison with Schnabel's last film, the stellar "Before Night Falls," probably the decade's best film about the inner life of a writer. The fabric of that story; a gay writer/poet growing up in pre-Castro Cuba, was played against such a sprawling canvas, it's almost impossible to top. Still, "Diving Bell and the Butterfly" aided by several late occuring revelations, builds to a deeply moving conclusion. Highly recommended. In French, true to its source.
By the way, don’t hesitate to seek "Before Night Falls," from your chosen video library.
The movie begins with a confused awakening; blurry images and sound from a hospital room; doctors, nurses, and their conflicted and conflicting dialogue on the patient's condition. Then the patient's gradual realization that while he thinks he's talking, he's unable to say a word. For a while every moment is seen from the agonized view of Bauby's one functioning eye. A sense of dread, that we're going to spend the film's entire running time seeing through one eye, is eventually leavened by a rich series of flashbacks.
Bauby was a talented and chauvinistic editor of Elle. In addition to the gorgeous wife and kids he sported a stunning mistress and a coterie of sycophants. Even in the hospital he's attended by three wispily beautiful therapists, almost as taken with his reputation and power as his former underlings.
Imprisoned in the "diving bell" of his afflicted body, Bauby is forced to endure a procession of well meaning but helpless friends and lovers, more problematic than helpful. His only relief comes from a determined therapist who contrives a tiny escape hatch for the "butterfly" within.
Director Julian Schnabel, working from Bauby’s memoir and an inspired script by Ronald Harwood, has elected to keep the narrators diffident and unsparing "voice" intact. This is most effective in several unnerving confrontations; between aging father, (Max Von Sydow) and stricken son, dutiful wife and fearful mistress, confused friends and colleagues.
Bauby's painful struggle to re enter the flow of life is punctuated with flights of fancy that will remind some of the Javier Bardem film "The Sea Within," from a couple years back. Sardonic humor and an undiminished taste for the pleasures of the female body serve as distractions, reinforcing the character’s refusal to give in to his infirmity.
But the chosen form of storytelling is as problematic as it is problem solving. Because the film begins with Bauby already afflicted we don’t get involved in the ebb and flow his prior life. That life is represented in snippets of recollection; vividly shot, but not quite enough to win our complete sympathy. By eschewing traditional narrative Schnabel and Harwood leave a bit of a vacuum. The movie captures your attention more often than your heart.
I mention this deficit mainly by way of comparison with Schnabel's last film, the stellar "Before Night Falls," probably the decade's best film about the inner life of a writer. The fabric of that story; a gay writer/poet growing up in pre-Castro Cuba, was played against such a sprawling canvas, it's almost impossible to top. Still, "Diving Bell and the Butterfly" aided by several late occuring revelations, builds to a deeply moving conclusion. Highly recommended. In French, true to its source.
By the way, don’t hesitate to seek "Before Night Falls," from your chosen video library.
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