Juno

What can I say -- I liked it but I didn’t love it? Which is a heck of lot more than I could say about last year’s “little indie film that could,” Little Miss Sunshine. Oscar noms for this film and its lead, Ellen Page, were not preposterous, but only as a crowd-pleasing longshot. Diablo Cody’s script about a bright misfit of a high-school girl getting pregnant is long on smart-aleck patter, but director Jason Reitman manages to find the heart beating within the material. Ellen Page is indeed a pleasure to watch and listen to as Juno MacGuff, and nerd-hero of the moment Michael Cera is funny, sweet, and true as her boyfriend. Juno’s parents are made both credible and amusing by J. K. Simmons and the always-sharp Alison Janney. You’re never quite sure where this story is going, and you’re pleasantly surprised by the way it works out. An inspired animated credit sequence and the quirky music add to the offbeat charm of the piece. And yet, in sum, I was left more with an impression of shtick than insight, more amusement than empathy. To me the film seems genuine, but not quite genuine enough. (2007, Images, n.) *7+* (MC-81.)

Miscellanea

I’ve been watching a bunch of films about which I don’t have much to say, but as a customer service will corral a few opinions. Though not a particular fan of Westerns, I had some expectations for 3:10 to Yuma (2007, dvd, *6 -*, MC-76) since I have a high regard for director James Mangold, and how can you go wrong with Russell Crowe and Christian Bale going toe to toe? Crowe indeed makes the film worth watching, and Bale holds his own, but this remake of a Fifties’ “classic” is complacently implausible while balletically violent -- though technically competent it remains mired in old myths of the Wild West. In some ways, Sam Peckinpah’s restored Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973) seems fresher, though also horse opera enough so that they might as well have had Kris Kristofferson, Bob Dylan, and Rita Coolidge sing their roles. Indeed the Dylan soundtrack is one of the main appeals here (“Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” etc.) There are stunning Western vistas, but the foreground story of old runnin’-&-gunnin’ buddy but now sheriff Pat (James Coburn) tracking down unregenerate outlaw Billy (KK) never took hold for me. Each scene was a set piece, some effective and some undermined by Peckinpah’s signature misogyny, but for me added up to no narrative drive at all. It was a hoot to watch familiar singers playact, and bit players old and new strut their stuff, but none of the characters register with any authenticity, except maybe Coburn’s. Old Sam was a nasty man, but he had a way with pictures.

Notwithstanding a limited taste for Westerns, I am looking forward to the reappraisal offered by my next film series at the Clark. Starting on March 15th, to tie in with a Frederic Remington exhibition, I’ll be showing four John Ford films in a series called, “A Wild and Savage Land.” Meanwhile, “A Green and Pleasant Land’ continues to draw big crowds, another audience of 160 or more for Tess (1980). This time around, I was slightly impatient with Roman Polanski’s leisurely pace through 172 minutes, but the beauty of the film and of Nastassja Kinski make the film eminently watchable, despite the drag of Hardy’s doom. One film that won’t fit in a future Clark series, but I should mention for the sake of completeness, is the fifth film in the Criterion Collection’s Eclipse Series boxed set of “Late Ozu.” Tokyo Twilight (1957) is certainly the darkest of the Ozu films I’ve seen, dealing with desertion, abortion, and suicide. Chishu Ryo is again the father, but this time daughter Setsuko Hara has fled her arranged marriage, and her younger sister is floundering in her romantic attachments. It’s grim and prolonged at 141 minutes -- worth seeing, but only a depressive would find it the most satisfying of Ozu’s films.

The antithesis of depressing is Ratatouille (2007, dvd, *7+*, MC-96), an animated wonder from Brad Bird and Pixar, which I would certainly recommend even though the Metacritic rating is rather overstated. The computer-generated animation is astounding and artful, but what really sets this film apart is the brilliance of its characterizations and the unlikely premise of making entertainment out of rats infesting a kitchen. But oh yeah, this one rat, he has a world-class sense of smell and a calling to cook, and thus finds himself running a restaurant in Paris. Complications ensue, but resolve -- “anyone can cook,” yes, but some just do it better than the rest. My compliments to the chef. (The Paris locale puts this in the book for future showing at the Clark.)

For a Clark family day this month, I showed (but did not select) Nanny McPhee (2005) and found it relatively enjoyable despite lukewarm reviews. With Emma Thompson repeating the roles of screenwriter and lead from Sense & Sensibility, and with strong support from the likes of Colin Firth, Kelly Macdonald, and Imelda Staunton, this knock-off of Marry Poppins does not descend too far into juvenilia, though I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone past grade school.

Offside

Talk about guerrilla filmmaking -- Jafar Pahani was denied permission to film at Iran’s win over Bahrain in the 2006 World Cup qualifier, but managed to shoot around the edges and produced a film that was promptly banned by the mullahs. With Bush so busy demonizing Iran, it is good to be reminded that while the theocracy is retrograde, the nation itself is ancient and modern, proud and diverse. A group of girls who play soccer themselves, though forbidden like all women from attending games at the stadium, figure out various ways to infiltrate, but are rounded up and kept in a pen outside, watched over by young soldiers just as eager to be watching the game, and just as frustrated by their ridiculous assignment. The droll absurdity of the situation is drawn out in a charming and metaphoric way, and while the girls (and we) don’t get to see a minute of the game, they do get to join in the street celebrations of national victory in the end. Though scripted and rehearsed in advance, the film is mostly shot in the actual times and places, another example of the inventiveness of what might be called Iranian neorealism, one of the most interesting movements in world cinema today. (2007, dvd, n.) *7* (MC-85.)

Lady Chatterley

Despite middlebrow tastes, I do not always join in complaints when a film is long and slow, as this film certainly is. Pascale Ferran’s adaptation of one version of D.H. Lawrence’s notorious tale of an aristocrat’s affair with her gamekeeper runs to 168 minutes, short on drama or music-cued emotions and long on languorous looks at the nature with which the lady and her lover become one. Though we are used to English adaptations of foreign literature, it takes some getting used to having English characters and landscapes speaking French. Nonetheless, I was in sympathy with the spirit of the enterprise, and Marina Hinds totally won me over with a low-key but ultimately glowing portrayal of a woman discovering herself and the world through sex. Though sexy enough to be sure, predominantly from a female perspective, this film is overpoweringly sensual in its embrace of the body of the world. Not for everyone, but for those willing to give the time and attention, it’s a lovely and unabashed look at natural love becoming spiritual. (2007, dvd, n.) *7+* (MC-80.)

Round up (and down)

There are two films I just watched to see if they might be worth showing sometime at the Clark, and determined that they are not. Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock? (2006) is an amusing but slight documentary about a painting found in a thrift store by a senior lady trucker with a pink 18-wheeler and a habit of dumpster diving. Though her reaction when first told the painting might be a Jackson Pollock winds up as the title of the film, it becomes her dream and obsession to confirm its authenticity. Director Harry Moses has no trouble getting us to side with the feisty old gal against such ossified snobs as Thomas Hoving, but the film doesn’t answer or even much illuminate any of the questions it raises.

I’d never seen The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), perhaps dissuaded because all I could ever think of was the long-ago Mad Magazine parody, “The Agony and the Agony.” On a restored widescreen DVD, director Carol Reed does imbue the story behind the painting of the Sistine Chapel with some visual splendor, but Charlton Heston is ludicrous as Michelangelo and Rex Harrison little better as Pope Julius. In sum this is hardly more than an overblown potboiler, with zero verisimilitude in the psychology or sociology of artistic creation.

On the other hand, there are two films I just showed at the Clark which affirmed their worth not just in the large audiences they drew, but in my reconsidered response as well other viewers’ acclaim. Julien Temple’s Pandaemonium (2000) was a very personal choice, not having received good reviews when released (and indeed now out of print), but to me a very interesting postmodern take on Coleridge and Wordsworth, and the Clark audience seemed to share my favorable impression. Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility (1995) was more of a sure thing, but had lost none of its lustre, from the wit and beauty of Emma Thompson to the passion and loveliness of Kate Winslet, to the exquisite landscapes and vivid interiors of Jane Austen’s world. A world always worth revisiting, as it will be over the next weeks, as PBS presents new or revived adaptations of all her novels.

Though I usually don’t feel impelled to watch popular new movies without some imprimatur of quality, I did deign to watch The Simpsons Movie (2007), but all I can offer is a one-word review: “D’oh.” I am equally devoid of response to Zhang Yimou’s Curse of the Golden Flower (2006), undoubtably a visual spectacle but, as far as I could tell, of no more substance than a Hollywood special effects blockbuster.

Golden Door (Nuovomondo.)

Like the grandparents of Martin Scorsese, who introduces this film, mine took precisely the journey depicted therein, from Sicily to Ellis Island, and in fact my grandfather’s name was the same as the lead character’s. So this sumptuously visualized film -- directed by Emanuele Crialese and shot by Agnes Godard -- had to work hard to lose me, which it almost did, with an uneasy hybrid style that could only be called “magic neorealism.” We start with hardbitten reality and wind up in a gorgeous dream, losing the documentary quality while the fantasy fails to convince, even while wowing the eye. The English title is totally misleading, since this film never gets as far as a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty, and the “New World” is glimpsed only in the fabulous hopes of those who are driven to immigrate. When one character opens a door from an intake examination room at Ellis Island, he faces a wall of bricks, which may be an historic observation or may be a symbol as subtle as a ton of bricks. One uneasy hybrid that does work is the appearance of Charlotte Gainsbourg as an Englishwoman who mysteriously falls in with the Italians in steerage. Still, there are some amazing extended shots in this movie, some stylized to perfection (a view from above as the ship departs, literally dividing the people aboard from the people on shore) and some that go over the top to excessive pictorialism (the ravishing but escapist overhead view of newcomers swimming through a river of milk.) So -- beautiful pictures, and an important story -- but it doesn’t come close to the greatest of all immigration films, Jan Troell’s The Emigrants and The New Land, with Liv Ullmann and Max von Sydow. (How is it possible that magnificent pair of masterpieces have never made it to DVD?) (2007, dvd, n.) *7-* (MC-74.)

I'm Not There

Ty Burr had a great line in his Boston Globe review of this film: “Either Dylan takes up a sizable block of psychic real estate in your head or you think he sings like a goat.” I am certainly of the former party, but even for me Todd Haynes’ film was a bit too adoring, a tad too clever, a little cultish. I liked it but at some point I started asking myself how much more of it I was obliged to watch, a fairly fatal lapse in attentiveness. Each of the fifteen minutes past two hours was a minute too long. I did not get the same sense of longueurs in Scorsese’s four-hour Dylan doc, No Direction Home. The trick of having 6 different actors depict Bobby Zimmerman’s different lives, or the eras of Bob Dylan’s career, is artfully done -- beyond question Haynes is an accomplished and passionate filmmaker -- but the segments are uneven, as well as sliced and diced to excess. As everyone has noted, Cate Blanchett is amazing as the Don’t Look Back Dylan, but the performance is rather superfluous since we already have the D.A. Pennebaker film. Christian Bale and Richard Gere do not register with anything like her force, nor does Heath Ledger as the Hollywood avatar, though his scenes have the advantage of the always striking Charlotte Gainsbourg as the wife being lost to celebrity. The black youth who represents Dylan’s phase as an acolyte of Woody Guthrie is so appealing that the implausibility does not faze the viewer. If the phantasmagoria eventually wears thin, there’s always the music, but better when it’s actually in Dylan’s voice. When the “real” Dylan -- or at least the guy that carries his driver’s license -- appears in the last shot of the film, blowing harp in tight close-up, I felt a double relief, back to actuality and done with this arduous play of masks. (2007, Images, n.) *7-* (MC-73.)

Seasons of Ozu: Late Films of a Japanese Master

I’ve been viewing and re-viewing the films of Yasujiro Ozu available on DVD through the good offices of the Criterion Collection, for an upcoming film series at the Clark in celebration of the opening of the Tadao Ando-designed “Stone Hill Center” on the Clark campus in June, with initial exhibitions relating to Japanese design. Here’s my survey:

Early Summer (Bakushu.) (1951, 125 min.) Six years after Japan's unconditional surrender, only the memory is scarred by war and the American occupation is invisible, except in the subtle struggle between the old ways and the new, between traditional Japanese norms and the influx of Western modernity. The struggle is played out in the matrimonial conflicts of a 28-year-old woman who lives in a well-off seaside suburb of Tokyo, in the house of her retired father and mother, along with her doctor brother, his wife and two boys. She’s an independent-minded working girl, who is gradually succumbing to the pressure to marry, and finds she has to make up her own mind, while everyone around her is relentlessly matchmaking. The woman in this situation, as is typical of Ozu, is called Noriko and played by the incomparable Setsuko Hara. The other Ozu favorite, Chishu Ryo, plays her irascible brother. Quiet and controlled, yet funny and moving, this is Ozu at his very steady best. I watched the whole thing unsure whether I had seen it before, or only seen the same characters in the same situations in other Ozu films. In the end it didn’t matter, everything was familiar yet surprising at the same time. This filmmaker’s concentration of approach requires -- and amply rewards -- a special sort of attention. *8*

Late Spring (Banshun.) (1949, 108 min.) This slightly earlier film seems underpopulated in comparison, with the focus more exclusively on Ryo and Hara, here as a widowed professor and the daughter who devotes herself to him goodnaturedly, but whom he must trick into consideration of accepting marriage herself by lying that he is going to remarry. In this case the subsidiary characters are not as vivid, and serve more as foils for the father and daughter. Otherwise, it’s prime Ozu. But just as well, I showed this in my previous Ozu series, so it makes sense to reverse judgment this time and select others. *7+*

Tokyo Story. (1953, 135 min.) What once seemed an isolated pinnacle of cinema, when so few Ozu films ever made it to these shores (and this one took 19 years), now seems very much of a piece with his others, except for the added focus on the older mother and the poignancy of her story. She and her husband (Ryo) travel the long way to Tokyo by train to visit their grown children. They are not particularly welcomed by their self-involved offspring, except for the widow (Hara) of their dead soldier son, and after some mild misadventures they return home. The actors and their family relations, the domestic scenes and settings, the resolutely formal approach to filming -- all are in Ozu’s signature mode. Perhaps the sentiment of quiet resignation is most touching here, but Ozu’s practice is amazingly consistent, ringing changes on a small (but big) set of themes and characters. The strangeness of his distinctive approach melts away when seen in the context of his ongoing career, and you can simply (and complexly) enjoy the varieties of chamber music that can be drawn out of a few familiar notes and shadings. *9*

Early Spring (Soshun.) (1956, 149 min.) Ozu focuses on the younger generation in this tale of salarymen and a new sort of woman in the workplace. A young couple has lost a child, and their connection along with it. The man drifts into an affair with a flirt at work. The wife steels herself against the straying husband, and does not follow when he is transferred. This thread of narrative is woven into a larger canvas of relatives, neighbors, and co-workers, but lacks the multi-generational family intimacy of Ozu’s other films, and seems overlong, though the observational quality is still intriguing. *6+*

Equinox Flower (Higanbana.) (1958, 120 min.) This is Ozu’s first color film, and it blooms into a real enhancement, making the domestic interiors and dress even more evocative of a distinctive Japanese aesthetic. And again he uses the family as the crucible for tensions between a traditional society and liberalizing Western ways. The main character is a businessman who is Janus-faced, punishing his daughter for choosing her own mate while advising the daughters of his friends to follow their own hearts. The humor is prevalent but low-key, as the patriarch is oh-so-slowly brought round to self-recognition, by the deferential strategies of all the women around him. You can almost count on an Ozu film to begin with an onrushing train to represent the invasion of modernity, and to resolve with the family laundry drying on poles, symbolizing some restoration of order and the transcendance of ordinary life. It makes me think of my favorite poem by a living author, Richard Wilbur’s “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World,” where clothes on the line are taken for angels: “Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,/Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam/And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.” This is a definite for showing at the Clark. *8*

Late Autumn (Akibiyori.) (1960, 128 min.) A reworking of the story of Late Spring, this again features Setsuko Hara, but instead of the daughter she is now the young widowed mother of a daughter, whom she must convince to marry and leave her to live alone. But she is still sublime, with a transcendent final shot of her as she kneels alone in her apartment and waves of emotion pass over her face, which is an echo of the famous conclusion of the earlier film, where Chishu Ryu as the father peels an apple and drops his head as the peel falls. So it’s the same film, but utterly different -- you know exactly what’s going to happen, but you are taken unawares, by laughter and tears, but most of all by compassion. As Ozu himself declared, “I want to make people feel without resorting to drama,” and my goodness, does he succeed! Besides the mother and daughter, this is the story of three comical old gents and the brash young woman who sets them straight in matters of the heart. *8+*

The End of Summer (Kohayagawa-ke no aki.) (1961, 103 min.) Ozu’s penultimate film is death-weighted in manner that suggests he knew his own end was approaching. As much as Jane Austen’s novels, all his films are obsessed with the economic and emotional task of making a good marriage, but this one ends with a funeral instead of a wedding. The retired patriarch of a family of three daughters has left management of his Osaka sake brewery to his son-in-law, but is more involved in his own hanky-panky than marrying off his eldest, widowed daughter (Hara again) or his youngest (the actress who was Hara’s daughter in the previous film is now her sister.) The first shot of the film announces in neon that this is the “New Japan,” and not the least significance of late Ozu is the gradual emergence of a modern country from the ashes of a feudal militarism. The beauty of traditional ways is on display but on its way out, though its passing is comic as well as sad. The conservative Japanese-ness of Ozu is usually summed up in the concept of mono no aware, a resigned sadness to the cycles of life, a sense of “the tears of things.” *7+*

Helvetica

A documentary about a typeface -- now there’s a snooze, you might say, but not at all. This is a lively and engaging look at the font that was developed in Switzerland in the ’50s and went on to conquer the world, becoming the identifier of global commerce and an essential aspect of our visual environment. Gary Hustwit goes around the world taking note of the ubiquity of Helvetica in signage and advertising, and interviewing print designers who take stands for or against the primacy of the streamlined sans serif font. It’s really a film about looking, and about sensitivity to visual signs, and something I could see showing at the Clark sometime. Once you’re attuned to Helvetica, you can’t help seeing it everywhere. (2007, dvd, n.) *7*

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Black as pitch in its humor, bleak in its view of humankind, this film is nonetheless highly entertaining. At the old master age of 83, Sidney Lumet is working the same street as Dog Day Afternoon thirty years ago, with hapless losers attempting a crime and watching it go so wrong. The very canny script by Kelly Masterson is adept at fracturing time sequence, repeating scenes from a different perspective, divulging the key event early and then flashing back and forward, masterfully sustaining psychological suspense and revealing the whole story bit by bit. Two brothers conspire to knock off a mom & pop jewelry store in a Westchester strip mall, but it all goes awry when their mom gets popped, and their pop is P.O.’ed. This is the House of Atreus in suburbia, as sleaze and incompetence compound into family tragedy. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is the half-bright older brother, caught in his own web of deceit, and Ethan Hawke is the dim bulb younger brother, roped into the scheme but not up to the job. Both are strikingly portrayed, and Marisa Tomei is believably hot if not quite believable as the elder’s trophy wife, while Albert Finney is a tad over the top as the pair’s father. There are certainly no characters you would want to identify with, but there is a fascination to watching human bugs in a bottle, eating and being eaten. This film suffers, like No Country for Old Men, by its inability to come to any sort of redemptive resolution, but here the violence along the way is realistically chaotic and panicky, rather than heroic and fetishized. (2007, Images, n.) *7+* (MC-84.)

The Color of Money

Paul Newman’s lone Oscar was not just a career compensation award -- he clearly won the Best Actor nod that year. And he carries this film on his own, even with the able assistance of rebounding director Marty Scorsese, Richard Price’s first script, a cocky but appealing Tom Cruise just before Top Gun hit, and a young but calculating Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. There’s a lot of lively camerawork, but I miss the lustrous widescreen b&w of The Hustler. The two films are as similar and as different as the straight pool and nine-ball they respectively depict, and the old and young players share that dialectic between grit and flash. Still Scorsese and Price craft an appropriate story from their signature obsessions, with the brotherhood of low life and the possibility of redemption through excellence. But believe me, Mr. Newman by himself is enough to make this film worth seeing or re-seeing, to watch Fast Eddie return 25 years later, first in the guise of the very manipulator who drove him out of game, and then as the hungry competitor he once was. (1986, dvd, r.) *8*