Cinema Salon
Steve Satullo talks about films, video, and media worth talking about. (Use search box at upper left to find films, directors, or performers.)
Saturday, October 26, 2024
Hulu-ciné-shins II
Saturday, September 21, 2024
Hulu-ciné-shins
Tuesday, September 17, 2024
Britbox and the scrapbox
A Britbox special offer paved the way for me to complete my survey of Jane Austen adaptations, starting with the ne plus ultra of Pride and Prejudice (Wiki), starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, and a host of players just perfect in their roles. In six episodes, this series has plenty of room to breathe; it’s quite true to the text and its innovations are well judged, exemplified by putting the oh-so-famous opening line into Lizzy’s mouth, thrown off as a sarcastic riposte to her mother (a horrifyingly comic portrayal by Alison Steadman). Susannah Harker is a perfect Jane Bennet, and the relationship of the sisters is touchingly similar to that between the writer Jane and her sister Cassandra, though they both remained maiden aunts. After thirty years, the series has been restored digitally to a pristine quality that makes settings and costumes look like new, quite a contrast to my initial viewing, from a VHS tape made by my mother off the original broadcast. Whatever your own pride or prejudice, I defy you not to enjoy this rendition.
I followed up by revisiting two versions of Persuasion. Roger Michell’s from 1995 (Wiki), starring Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds, remains my favorite by far, second only to the much more expansive P&P, and tied with the contemporaneous S&S. The 2007 version (Wiki) seems barely adequate now that my original moment of being smitten by Sally Hawkins (as Poppy in Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky) has passed, since the rest of the production does not come up to her level.
Whilst on Britbox, I took another look at Romola Garai as Emma (Wiki) in a 2009 BBC series that definitely takes liberties in opening out the book, but is not as misleading as some latter-day Austen adaptations and imitations. Romola plays Emma believably but somewhat broadly; Jonny Lee Miller is good, if a little too hunky, as Knightley; but Michael Gambon is perhaps the best Mr. Woodhouse. The period design is pretty reliable, with well-placed emphasis on domestic architecture, and the supporting actors are adequate if not memorable. Going more for the comic than the ironic, the only thing this has over other versions of Emma is the amplitude of four episodes, but it does not come close to the pitch-perfect richness of the 1995 P&P.
To complete my survey, I returned to the 1940 Pride and Prejudice (Wiki) starring Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson, who both perform okay in a ludicrous MGM production that puts the “costume” in “costume drama.” With no taste for verisimilitude, appropriate Regency design, or fidelity to Austen’s text or tone, the film plays for broad domestic comedy and goes for a mid-Victorian look, with absurd leftovers from the Gone with the Wind shoot. The “Golden Age of Hollywood” attempts literature but reduces it to abject formula.
Finally, as I was about to close the book on Austen, I noticed that Hulu was also now offering the canonical 1995 P&P, plus a follow-up that I had never seen, a 2008 BBC/Andrew Davies adaptation of Sense and Sensibility (MC-79). We’re halfway to Bridgerton here, as this two-part series opens with a “tasteful” sex scene with little reference to the book. If Davies’ stated aim was to make viewers forget the Emma Thompson version, this was a woeful failure, with not one of the performers being more memorable than the film’s, though Dan Stevens does a good job imitating Hugh Grant. But – E.T.>Hattie Morahan, Kate Winslet>Charity Wakefield, Alan Rickman>David Morrissey, Greg Wise>Dominic Cooper. Nonetheless, I enjoyed watching this Bronte-like take on our dear proper Jane, and was eventually won over by Morahan’s performance in contrast to dear Emma’s.
This deep immersion in Janeite lore certainly revealed the limited circumference of her world, and the repeated reliance on certain types and tropes, but also the consummate artistry of her self-described “fine brush on two inches of ivory,” and penetrating wit about the personalities within her purview.
So in sum, the Austen adaptations to watch are the Jennifer Ehle P&P, the Amanda Root Persuasion, the Kate Beckinsale Emma, the Emma Thompson-Kate Winslet Sense & Sensibility, the Frances O’Connor Mansfield Park, and the Felicity Jones-Carey Mulligan Northanger Abbey, with Whit Stillman’s Love & Friendship as a bonus.
Also on Britbox, Stonehouse (MC-77) follows in the tradition of the successful Hugh Grant series A Very English Scandal, dealing in three hour-long episodes with the feckless peccadillos of a real British politician. The title character is played enjoyably by Matthew Macfadyen, in a manner much like his performance in Succession, with his real-life spouse Keeley Hawes as the long-suffering wife.
Flying to and from the U.K., I sort-of-watched some so-so films on which I will report briefly. Wicked Little Letters (MC-58) boasts Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley, two must-see actresses as far as I’m concerned, and a host of familiar British faces, including Anjana Vasan, the star of We Are Lady Parts. Billed as a “black comedy mystery,” it’s mainly a cozy BBC-worthy visit to an actual seaside hamlet a hundred years ago, where two neighbors start out as friends but wind up as courtroom adversaries. But, oh those two.
Coming back, comfortably provided with better screen and headphones, I overlooked poor reviews to watch Bob Marley: One Love (MC-43), which I liked well enough, but nowhere near as much as the 2012 documentary Marley. Kingsley Ben-Adir makes a credible reggae star (more so than as either Malcolm X or a Ken), and Lashana Lynch is good as Rita Marley. Director Reinaldo Marcus Green does what he can with a script by committee and under Marley family supervision, which does not venture far beyond the usual rock musician biopic tropes. But the film does revive a lot of kick-ass music.
High over the Atlantic, I also got halfway into popular recent films Anybody But You and Challengers – do not need to see more of the former, but may look to see the rest of the latter when I can.
The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (MC-63, AMZ) is better than its Metacritic average would suggest, as you might expect of a film that stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Claire Foy, Toby Jones, and Andrea Riseborough, with narration by Olivia Colman. Will Sharpe’s off-kilter tale relates the life of eccentric late-Victorian artist Louis Wain, whose hugely-popular pictures of cats are credited with changing their cultural image from feral ratcatchers to household pets. The film is all over the place, narratively and stylistically, but well-designed, and grounded in the touching if tragic romance between Cumberbatch and Foy. Not nearly as twee as it might have been, absent the admirable acting.
Ethan Hawke has carved out a commendable career for himself, so I ignored poor reviews to watch his directorial effort Wildcat (MC-55, Kanopy), starring his daughter Maya Hawke as Flannery O’Connor. She also plays characters in fragments from some of O’Connor’s stories, in a literal interpretation of their autobiographical impulse. Laura Linney plays her mother, in real life and in the stories. A lot of actors prove willing to pitch in on another actor’s film, so there are several well-known cameos. And the overall look of the film, with its period recreations, does not bespeak a strained indie budget. So I respond to this film as I’ve responded to the work of its subject – interesting, but not really hitting me where I live. Still, a pretty good attempt at making a biopic out of the solitary life of a writer.
After this potpourri, next up will be a lengthy survey of recent offerings on Hulu.
Sunday, July 07, 2024
Second-tier streaming channels
To find HBO under this heading is surprising, but as MAX it has certainly devolved into a channel that is only worthwhile for free, or for the occasional month. The slogan used to be “It’s not TV, it’s HBO,” but now it should be “It’s not HBO, it’s just TV.” Which is not to say it’s worthless, but lacking an identity, and not worth a continuing subscription (though I continue to piggyback on a friend’s cable subscription).
I confess to availing myself of Max’s incongruous live sporting events on occasion, and I’m a dedicated fan of John Oliver (who alternatively is easy to watch on YouTube). And credit where it’s due – the third season of Hacks (MC-86) lived up to, and even exceeded, expectations. MAX also offers a Hannah Einbinder comedy special, Everything Must Go, which confirms her ability as an actress, but is not quite as funny or appealing as the character she plays on Hacks. The channel’s current flagship program, House of the Dragon, stands absolutely no chance with me. I did give Lance Oppenheimer’s Ren Faire a chance to grab me . . . and it didn’t. Established fondness for two performers led me to a couple of films in a line-up that has been MAX-imized
I responded to Am I Okay? (MC-72) with “Yes, you are – not great, but just fine.” This is Tig Notaro’s directorial debut, in tandem with her wife Stephanie Allynne, and she also delivers an amusing cameo. Dakota Johnson plays a 32-year-old near-virgin, a diffident would-be painter but current receptionist at a swank LA spa, who belatedly realizes her erotic tendencies lean toward women. Her long-time best friend (Sonoya Mizuno), a much more confident professional woman, tries to coach her love life but with little success, and then is promoted to a distant job, which leads to friction that proves liberating to the Dakota character. Sweet and funny, with more than a hint of Tig’s dry humor, as well as Stephanie’s lived experience, though the script by Lauren Pomerantz is reputedly quite autobiographical.
I responded to Men (MC-65) with “Aren’t they awful?” Yes, but the woman they are being awful to is Jessie Buckley, so I decided to give Alex Garland’s film a chance. And before the film goes off the rails in the third act, it gives her the opportunity to be her magnetic self, as well as painting a bucolic picture of the English countryside. Her well-off character has rented a large old cottage for a healing getaway, after the ambiguous death of her husband, glimpsed in brief flashbacks. This Covid-era nightmare turns from pastoral to horrific, as Jessie is threatened by a variety of men, all played by Rory Kinnear, with not-so-special effects. The symbolism is laid on so thick it eventually becomes ridiculous, as the monstrous turns into a monstrosity. Rarely have I been so engaged with a film, only to turn against it so vehemently in the last third.
Where HBO shows were once original and inspired, now they’re more like extruded product. Likewise, the true-crime documentaries that have become a staple. But HBO still produces some docs worth seeing, such as Stax: Soulsville U.S.A. (MC-81). It’s an exploration as much as a promotion, since director Jamila Wignot does considerably more than recycle delightful footage from concert films like Monterey Pop and Wattstax. Using an ample archival record of performance and studio scenes, mixed with newsreels and retrospective interviews, she tells the story of the Memphis counterpart to Motown, featuring Booker T. Jones, Otis Redding, and Isaac Hayes among many others. In four hour-long episodes, the music business is situated in the context of race relations in the Sixties and Seventies and of an economy where the big fish devour the little fish, so the nostalgia is balanced by social critique, where the meeting of black and white is co-opted by green.
In the streaming channel shakeout now underway, Paramount+ is in the process of being sold and/or broken up, and consequently is offering a month’s free trial, perfectly timed for the new fourth season of my favorite Showtime series ever, Couples Therapy (Wiki). Rather than beating the drum for this outstanding series yet again, I refer you to my previous comments. I just love this show, it’s reality TV made real and comes with my highest recommendation.
So with a month to peruse P+, I came up with some other worthy viewing. In a round-up of documentaries, I’ll write up Oscar-nominated Chilean film The Eternal Memory. And I was happy to reacquaint myself with The One and Only Dick Gregory (MC-79), a notable figure of my younger days, in a documentary that gives equal weight to his comedy and his activism. You’ll laugh and you’ll be inspired.
Reminded by Hit Man of how much I like Richard Linklater, I was happy to give a second chance to one that initially struck me as a minor disappointment, Everyone Wants Some!! (MC-85). Lo and behold, I discovered it on P+, the house of disappointment. But on this viewing, I found more to like, and missed less of what I like most about Rick. This film pairs nicely with Dazed and Confused, taking his autobiography from the last days of high school to the first days of college. It also marks the emergence of Glenn Powell, who flowered in Hit Man.
Next up I’ll return to the first-tier streaming channel Hulu, and also post my round-up of recent award-worthy documentaries.
Saturday, June 29, 2024
Net-flix-ations
Criterion of judgment
Before I get started on another long celebration of the Criterion Channel, I want to highlight the next best streaming source for wide-ranging classics old and new, foreign and documentary, film and tv, namely Kanopy, which is available free through participating libraries, academic or public. You’ll see the channel cited frequently as the place I found a film, sometimes when available on another channel that I don’t have a subscription to, and sometimes when I haven’t been able to find it any other place at all.
Such as four Eric Rohmer films that follow up nicely on one of my previous Criterion roundups, which led with the revival of Rohmer’s “Tales of Four Seasons” from the 1990s, and now Kanopy popped up with two of his “Comedies & Proverbs” from the 1980s, and two other anthology films from the same period.
First off, The Aviator’s Wife (Wiki), not remembered as one of my favorites, but this time around I appreciated the Rohmeresque irony of the title character never appearing in the film, and I took to Marie Riviere as l’autre femme more in the context of her other roles for Rohmer over the years. It can all seem quite inconsequential unless you are attuned to his wavelength, with its everyday blend of eros, humor, and philosophic insight. As much as Truffaut, Rohmer was a “man who loved women,” though perhaps less of a libertine and more a fond aesthetic admirer of youth and beauty.
It wasn’t till the final scene that I definitely remembered seeing Boyfriends and Girlfriends (Wiki), yet another amorous roundelay among young people looking for a proper mating. Whether in Paris or various vacation venues, Rohmer is always attentive to architecture and environment, and this time it’s a newly-built satellite city around Paris, and a shifting group of young professionals. This film is delightful, even if not memorable, in the long frieze of Rohmer’s portraits of desiring and desirable young people.
Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (Wiki) was definitely new to me, a country-mouse/city-mouse story of two young women who meet in the countryside and then room together in Paris, in four discrete episodes of understated humor. This print seemed to be substandard, but the film itself is very much of a piece with Rohmer’s other work, and I was happy to see it.
Rendezvous in Paris (Wiki) details three separate anecdotes, in which different young characters meet up in a café, various parks, or the Picasso museum. Each episode seemed fresh to me, even though I showed the third in my own anthology program at the Clark. I’d almost recommend this as an introduction to Rohmer if you aren’t particularly familiar with his work, even before his acknowledged masterpieces. If you like this, there’s plenty more where that came from.
While I was focused on other channels, Criterion accumulated several highly-rated streaming premieres. First off, there was Our Body (MC-93), a Frederick Wiseman-like documentary about a French gynecological hospital, with one of 2023’s highest Metacritic ratings. To tell the truth, for me it went from must-see to can’t-watch, given my squeamishness. An admirable piece of work, but too much for my delicate sensibilities.
Then came two films high on my must-watch list. Tótem (MC-91) is a dense and intimate family portrait as seen through the watchful, empathetic eyes of a 7-year-old girl. It’s the birthday of her father, an artist who is dying of cancer. With her, we are thrown into the maelstrom of an extended Mexican family, breaking down and re-forming around the tragedy of a beloved younger son. The patriarch is a grumpy psychologist with his own medical problems. Two elder sisters are putting on the party for their sick brother, but from clashing perspectives. The central girl, Sol, has younger and older cousins, and a fascination for small living things around her, as she is told not to bother her father, who is resting up for the party. In a tight frame, with long up-close takes, we follow as Sol begins to put together a picture of a family coping with the unstated presence of death in their midst. Her mother drops her off in the morning, leaving her (and us) to spend the day trying to make sense of what is going on around her, and then the mother returns for the party and a stunning celebratory performance they have worked out together. Lila Avilés has crafted a small film of major import, full of life under the shadow of mortality,
A new film from acclaimed Turkish writer-director Nuri Bilge Ceylan is always an event, though sometimes a prospect of endurance more than enjoyment, so I spread the 3¼ hour running time of About Dry Grasses (MC-87) over several evenings. It’s slow-moving and extremely talky, but decidedly interesting, Chekhov filtered through Antonioni. Set in desolate, wintry Eastern Anatolia, it follows three teachers who wind up on this remote posting for differing reasons. One is a discontented art teacher who seems to have an inappropriate relationship with a middle school girl. He and his roommate each form a relationship with a woman from another school who lost her leg in a terrorist bombing (Merve Dizdar won Best Actress at Cannes). The film moves from desolate widescreen landscapes to crowded dark rooms, with long takes, stationary camera, and extended conversations with very little resolution. So – not for everyone, but riveting for anyone who can get on Ceylan’s wavelength.
I missed a dimension of Anselm (MC-82), since Wim Wenders’ portrait of Anselm Kiefer is meant to be seen in 3-D, but I still found it engaging, though I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone unfamiliar with the famous German artist. There’s no narration and little speech altogether. It’s mostly just Kiefer wandering around the large industrial estate where he produces and displays his art, in an installation as monumental as James Turrell’s Roden Crater. For me it was enlivened by prior accounts from a friend who had visited both. Kiefer is played as an 8-year-old boy in reenactments that convey what little is offered of his biography, and for later years there’s news footage of various sorts. This documentary is reliant on how much interest and patience you bring to it.
Amanda (MC-81) is a privileged pain-in-the-ass post-adolescent, returned from college abroad and feeling stifled as she lazes about her parents’ mansion and tries futilely to connect with any other being, human or otherwise. This is the debut film of Carolina Cavalli, and I appreciated its aura of authenticity as well as absurdity, sort of like a Milanese Lady Bird. Amanda, a character made palatable by Benedetta Porcaroli’s portrayal, finally finds a best friend as aberrant and abrasive as herself, a match made in heaven, or some other place.
Unrest (MC-75) is an oddity that intrigued me, but seems unlikely to appeal to many. The matter is significant, but the manner off-putting. The story is set among Swiss watchmakers in the 1870s, when the engine of global capitalism is revving up, while the local workers strive to organize an anarchist commune, under the watchful eye of Pyotr Kropotkin. The workers are primarily craftswomen doing incredibly detailed work, including placement of the all-important “unrest” wheel. Much of the camerawork is off-center, from a security-camera-like distance where the viewer frequently cannot tell who’s speaking, among small figures crowded into a corner of the frame. There are compelling close-ups of the painstaking work, some of the long shots privilege the natural background over the dialogue, and the viewer feels relief and impact when actually able to see the face of the person speaking. But overall, all sorts of interesting notions about politics and economics, about timekeeping and working conditions, are adumbrated indirectly and offhand, some quite humorously. The Swiss director keeps his distance even though (or maybe because) the subject is part of his family history.
The File on Thelma Jordon (Wiki) remakes the story of Double Indemnity, with Stanwyck as the femme fatale luring a supposedly wised-up guy into becoming an accomplice to her own dastardly plot. She is reliably great with whatever material she’s given, but Wendell Corey is no Fred MacMurray. And I might have said that Robert Siodmak is no Billy Wilder, but instead I made a note to look for other films he directed, since this had a very distinctive look and style, even when saddled with a wooden male lead and a fairly nonsensical script. It’s not among Stanwyck’s unmissable performances, but displays her characteristic quality work. And served as an entrée into other viewing from one of my toddler years.
Joan Crawford is not among the old Hollywood divas that I’ve fallen for, but I gave The Damned Don’t Cry (Wiki) a try because it was supposed to reflect her own rise from rural poverty to stardom, and be loved in particular by her fans. God knows it was campy enough to verge on self-caricature, but I had no conception that it was based on the same situation as Warren Beatty’s Bugsy – let’s just say Joan Crawford is no Annette Bening.
I’d watched a few films in a recent John Garfield collection, but didn’t catch The Breaking Point (Wiki) till it appeared in this 1950 collection. A reworking of Hemingway’s To Have and To Have Not, this version is not highjacked by Bogie-Bacall chemistry as it pairs Garfield with Patricia Neal in a smaller but still effective role as a tramp. Michael Curtiz directs with finesse, and Garfield demonstrates why he was a major star, anguished and soulful as a boat owner who must resort to smuggling, with mountingly disastrous results. Within two years, hounded by HUAC, he would be dead of a heart attack at 39.
Caged (Wiki) has been called a “Camp classic,” but is something more than that, coming soon after The Snake Pit and leading to a whole subgenre of Women in Prison pictures (persisting all the way to Orange is the New Black). It’s well-directed by John Cromwell, with a reasonable amount of verisimilitude and a pair of Oscar-nominated performances. Eleanor Parker is surprisingly good in transforming from pregnant teen bride, jailed as accomplice to her husband’s fatal armed robbery, into a hard-bitten criminal in course of her sentence. Hope Emerson plays the Nurse Ratchet-like prison matron, and Agnes Moorehead the reform-minded warden. While not without its preposterous elements, the film is generally a serious-minded affair.
I’ve never really understood why some people consider Nicholas Ray to be a great director, and Born to be Bad (Wiki) does not change that. And I’ve never seen much in Joan Fontaine, and her simpering mendacity here doesn’t change that. Not quite bad enough to be good.
I wrapped up this calendrical cross-section by watching an Alfred Hitchcock film that I hadn’t seen before, Stage Fright (Wiki). His return from Hollywood to England is less a murder mystery than a comedy about stage acting, with Marlene Dietrich as a swan-like chanteuse (whose husband is the victim) and Jane Wyman as the acting student who takes on various real-life roles to try to clear her long-time friend (Richard Todd) of suspicion, while deceiving the police officer (Michael Wilding) who wins her heart. The supporting cast is sterling, and the dialogue witty, though it’s not very stirring as a thriller.
Whoops, one more 1950 film that I’d never seen, Night and the City (Wiki), not to be confused (as I was) with The Naked City, which has Jules Dassin also moving to London, in the midst of being blacklisted in Hollywood. Richard Widmark goes with him as a dreaming and scheming American, a tout scrounging around for money before trying for a big score as a wrestling promoter, where he runs into a rough crowd. As with his earlier film about NYC and his later film about Cleveland (see below), Dassin demonstrates a distinctive, sometimes overwrought thriller style and relies on location shooting for his action scenes. Considered too dark upon release, the film is now taken as an epitome of noir.
(N.B. Many of the films in the “1950 Peak Noir” collection will depart the channel at the end of June, but many will return in other collections, or can be found on other streaming channels.)
While immersed in the era of Hollywood films around the time of my birth, I watched two other noirish films. Undercurrent (Wiki) is not what you expect from director Vincente Minelli or stars Katherine Hepburn and Robert Mitchum. She’s a scientist’s daughter, falling for the businessman who buys his invention, only to discover he is not the man she imagined. And the brother whom he despises (Mitchum) is the opposite of what he claims. It’s all quite implausible, but not offensively so.
In The House on Telegraph Hill (Wiki), Valentina Cortese is another woman married to a man (Richard Basehart, whom she married in real life) who is not what he seems. But then neither is she, having taken the identity of a friend who died in their displaced persons camp after WWII. In this Robert Wise film, the couple comes together for highly mixed motives and goes to live in a scenic San Francisco mansion, where nasty business is afoot. Another white knight emerges to save our beleaguered heroine, in this tale from back in a previous age when gaslighting was à la mode.
I also sampled a couple of films, new to me, in a recent collection called “Hollywood Crack-Up” containing American films from the 1960s depicting societal or psychological breakdown, from The Manchurian Candidate to Pretty Poison.
Uptight (Wiki) is a remarkable document, if not a good film. Jules Dassin imports the plot of The Informer from Dublin in 1922 to Cleveland in 1968, about a Black Panther-like group instead of the IRA. The film is colorful in several senses, and highly stylized, but I was particularly struck by some remarkable location footage in The Flats at the time I was working down there, and around the Hough neighborhood, from when I was driving through that area while the streets were occupied by the National Guard. So I was willing to overlook the film’s declamatory staginess for that window back in time, as it opens with MLK’s funeral and surveys a cross-section of Black responses to the tragedy. Frequently over-the-top and stereotypical, and hampered by the source material, this film is still a worthwhile time capsule.
Pressure Point (Wiki) has a surprisingly current resonance (post-Charlottesville, “very fine people on both sides,” and all the rest), flashing back from 1962 to 1942 as prison psychiatrist Sidney Poitier tries to treat an unrepentant Nazi seditionist, startlingly well played by pop singer Bobby Darin (“Somewhere across the sea . . .”). Based on a case study in Robert Lindner’s The Fifty-Minute Hour, and well directed by Hubert Cornfield, it’s another evocative time capsule, speaking to the state of psychiatry as well as politics. (And also hearkens back to Poitier’s doctor-treating-racist role in No Way Out, included in the “1950 Peak Noir” collection.)
Postcards from the Edge (1990, MC-71) has worn well. Criterion had it in a collection of Shirley MacLaine movies, but I was most interested in Meryl Streep’s acting (and singing). Mike Nichols directs Carrie Fisher’s story, based loosely on her relationship with her mother, Debbie Reynolds. It’s a lively and funny Hollywood story, with many stars and stars-to-be parading through.
Criterion curates 4-8 new collections each month, so there’s always something new to explore in some depth. (Which means some films leave each month as well.) In June, there are new career retrospectives for the likes of Ingmar Bergman, Paul Schrader, and Céline Sciamma, each containing films well worth seeing or re-seeing. There are also clever thematic collections, which combine to make Criterion the one indispensable streaming channel, for which I have a charter annual subscription that comes to $8.33 per month.
In a previous compilation of Criterion reviews, I wrote at some length about my admiration for the filmmaker Mia Hansen-Love, and then on Kanopy I found her precocious first feature film All is Forgiven (MC-85), made in 2007 but not released in the U.S. till 2021. What’s most impressive is how her distinctive observational style was established right from the beginning. This is a bifurcated story about a bifurcated couple, earnest Austrian professional woman and French would-be poet, a layabout devoted to drugs and drink. Inevitably they split up, and the mother forbids any contact between father and daughter. Jumping ahead a dozen years, the girl is a senior in high school (played beautifully by the older sister of the young girl), and her cleaned-up father tries to reconnect. Don’t expect resolution from Hansen-Love, but count on intimate exploration of everyday realities.
That leads me to two other films I caught up with on Kanopy, to use my “tickets” before they expired at the end of the month (with a library card, you get to watch a certain number of films and tv series per month).
I’ve recently been on the lookout for films starring Virginie Efira, so Revoir Paris (MC-71) caught my eye. I didn’t know what it was about, or that the role had won her a César for Best Actress, but Alice Winocour’s film was well worth finding. Directly inspired by Islamist terror attacks in 2015, it follows a survivor who struggles to piece together memories of the event after she had blacked out the experience. Like a detective, she follows clues to recreate the story, and finds a measure of healing by communing with other survivors in solidarity. The horrific event is sensitively handled, and other perspectives amplify the central character’s experience. Politics aside, the film offers immersion in the psychology and sociology of trauma, and another striking performance by Efira, who makes any film she’s in worth your time.
The Royal Hotel (MC-77) is a witty misnomer for a godforsaken bar deep in the Australian outback, where two vagabond American girls wind up when their money runs out. I’d been impressed by director Kitty Green’s #MeToo first feature The Assistant, and my summation applies equally to this film: “This is a horror story of everyday life, relying on suffocating detail and observation, rather than melodrama.” This one also stars Julia Garner, along with Jessica Henwick, as the two women tend bar to earn money to move on, serving a virtually all-male clientele of miners, with sexual harassment a given and the threat of violence always present. Subdued but tense as any thriller, the film suffers from a would-be cathartic ending, like waking up from a bad dream.
You can bet I’ll be back soon with another round-up of Criterion and Kanopy titles, but next I’ll be dipping back into Netflix and then Hulu for updates, with another round-up of recently acclaimed documentaries.
Reunion with Jane Austen
Given her subsequent history, I was quite surprised to find Gwyneth Paltrow a perfectly decent Emma (1996, MC-66, AMZ), if a little swan-like, in Douglas McGrath’s lively but thoroughly Miramax-ed adaptation. Toni Collette as Harriet Smith and Ewan MacGregor as Frank Churchill are good, Jeremy Northam is appealing if not severe enough as Mr. Knightley, but Juliet Stevenson steals the show as Mrs. Elton.
It wasn’t that long ago that I enjoyed Anya Taylor-Joy as Emma (2020, MC-71), but on re-viewing after recent re-reading, I was much more intolerant, not so much with the highly-stylized and unhistorical design (first-time feature director Autumn de Wilde’s background was in music videos) as with a bad tendency to misrepresent the psychology of the characters and to invent scenes and dialogue that are just plain wrong. None of the performances are natural or definitive. Not as objectionable as the 2005 P&P, and fine for anyone who doesn’t realize what they are missing.
Nonetheless, I’ve long thought that Kate Beckinsale was the perfect Emma (1996, Wiki), and now even more so. The rest of the cast is top-notch as well, with unbeatable performances from Samantha Morton as Harriet, Mark Strong as Knightley, and Olivia Williams as Jane Fairfax. As with so many Austen adaptations, the script is by Andrew Davies, and the production team came over from the Ehle-Firth P&P, though in more abridged fashion. This film features a valuable new take on the sociological dimension of the story, by showing how the lifestyle of the characters is supported by the arduous labors of servants.
I’m leery of algorithms, but glad for the one that took me directly to another Beckinsale-in-Austen adaptation, Love & Friendship (2016, MC-87). Where twenty years before, Kate had played an immature young woman as conceived by a mature Austen, here she plays the older Lady Susan – the most accomplished flirt in England – as imagined by the teenaged Jane. Whit Stillman’s adaptation re-teams Beckinsale with Chloe Sevigny in a film that made my best of the year list at the time, and holds up quite well.
This survey prompted me to take yet another look at Sense and Sensibility (1995, Wiki), which may be taken to have started the Jane Austen boom in film adaptations. Wow, it’s still great. Emma Thompson’s Oscar-winning script makes the most of the only Austen novel I have no interest in rereading, her first to be published. She is also perfect as the sensible older sister, while a startlingly young Kate Winslet is superb as the sensitive younger sister. Counterintuitively, Ang Lee was a wonderful choice to direct, with a fresh eye for the English countryside and a knack for social satire and family drama. The supporting cast is exceptional, with many stars-in-waiting.
Roger Michell’s 1995 adaptation of Persuasion (Wiki) with Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds ranks at or near the top of my favorite Jane Austen movies, and there’s a 2007 BBC version (Wiki) with an admirable Sally Hawkins that’s pretty good as well. (Reviewed here and here.) I found the Netflix version of 2022 unwatchable, with an utterly miscast Dakota Johnson (as bad as Keira Knightley in P&P).
Did I somehow miss Northanger Abbey (Wiki) when it appeared on Masterpiece in 2007, or was I simply not astute enough to recognize the stars that Felicity Jones and Carey Mulligan would become, and passed over it as a mere TV movie not worth a review. At any rate, I recently caught it on Kanopy, and whether I’d forgotten or not, was very happy to see it this go-round. Felicity (though two years older IRL) is the young ingenue new to Bath taken in by marital schemer Carey. As with so many British costume dramas, the character acting is good across the board, the settings and costumes first rate, and here one of Jane Austen’s slighter works, a parody of popular gothic novels, is handled with an appealing lightness.
Now I am back into re-reading Pride and Prejudice, and I’ll return with a postscript after taking another look at the canonical 1995 adaptation, and maybe even the one from 1940 with Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier. Perhaps I’ll even take another look at Romola Garai as Emma.
To whom I revert for a final thought. Famously, Jane Austen believed no one would like her title character, except herself. Famously, she has been proved wrong. Emma Woodhouse is no Emma Bovary, but in her own way just as selfish and self-deluded. Nonetheless her playfulness, wit, and good nature balance off her snobbery, privilege, and amour-propre. In her most mature work, Austen draws on her own younger self with satire and indulgence, and portrays in the person of Mr. Knightley the wisdom and acuity gained over time.
Paltrow gets the pampered princess, Taylor-Joy gets the supercilious snob, but Beckinsale gets it all, but most of all Emma’s youthful delight in her own small world, and her own active brain.
The Austen boom has petered out with lackluster extensions like Sanditon or pale imitations like Bridgerton, in which I take no interest, but leaves behind a handful of masterpieces. Without shame, I declare myself a genuine Janeite, both in print and on screen.
Monday, May 27, 2024
Consumer advisory
Come the playoffs this month, and hopes high for my Cavaliers, streaming was sometimes preempted by network games, which meant going out to watch at a bar with a friend, or avoiding all news until the game could be streamed on delay. Serendipitously, I happened upon an offer for YouTube TV, a 21-day free trial followed by three months at $15 off the usual $73.
The Cavs expired before the free trial did, so I had no reason to continue, but I have to say that I was very impressed with the service, and would recommend it to any cable tv subscriber who is concerned about losing their familiar setup, with all the usual channels and DVR function. YouTube TV replicates the cable experience with a very smooth interface and a much simpler remote. The service was superfluous to me personally, but for anyone who is still hesitant to cut the cord, you’re likely to find it a very reassuring transition, with access to sports, news, and other live programming, and still a significant savings over the usual cost of cable tv.
While I’m at it, let me also flag YouTube itself as a streaming channel that can fill in a lot of regular tv viewing. I use it to watch favorite regular programs like Stephen Colbert or Seth Meyers monologues, SNL skits, PBS Newshour segments, and the like. So I never miss the typical channel-surfing experience. To me it makes much more sense to pick and choose one’s viewing carefully than to drown in a flood of indiscriminately bundled content.
I’m not usually one to plug a megacorporation, but credit where its due, I thank Google for the free trial, and decidedly recommend YouTube TV, if you’re into that sort of thing.