Catching up

I finally finished two Derek Jarman films that had been kicking around my TiVo “Now Playing” list for months and months, one from Sundance and one from IFC. I’d seen Caravaggio (1986) before (and no, he didn’t paint the Deposition I mentioned two entries ago -- maybe I was thinking of the Mantegna "Dead Christ"?), but this was my first viewing of Edward II (1991), adapted from the Christopher Marlowe play. Jarman certainly is a distinctive filmmaker, if not exactly on my wavelength. He tends to film minimalist theatrical tableaux with decidedly gay themes and sensibilities. But his films are seductive if you give in to their appeal -- Wittgenstein (1993) is my particular favorite, but both this Baroque artistic drama and Plantagenet history play are eye-opening, lush with language and color and histrionics. Tilda Swinton and Nigel Terry anchor strong casts in both. Well worth watching if you have the taste for it, and not if not.

I also watched two documentaries that I can commend, if not urge you to see, unless you have an antecedent interest: the first two hour-long episodes of the surprisingly visual, if ultimately repetitious, National Geographic series on Jared Diamond’s influential book of geographical determinism, Guns, Germs, and Steel, which attempts to answer a New Guinean’s query, why do you people of the West have so much “cargo”?; and a Sundance Channel “doc day” presentation of Deadline, a well done analysis of how the death penalty actually works and Governor Ryan’s last minute commutation of every death row sentence in Illinois.

Then from the ridiculous to the sublime -- 5 films in less than 24 hours. Relaxing on a Saturday evening I watched Serenity, to confirm that not everything my Buffy main man, Joss Whedon, does is magic -- sure it has the snappy dialogue you’d expect from a third generation screenwriter, and the familiar space cowboy tropes of Star Wars et al. are leavened with the historical perspective he learned at Wesleyan, but I never got past the feeling I’d seen it all before and didn’t need to see it again. I will not be tempted to watch the short-lived Firefly tv series on which Serenity is based.

You know the thing about junk food -- it just makes you hungry for more -- so then I popped Wedding Crashers into the machine. I can’t believe I watched the whole witless thing. There’s some naughty energy in the set up, and Vince Vaughan and Owen Wilson have some charm as the horndog duo, but the film just goes slack-jawed and drools. The gals who tame the guys have all the personality of inflatable dolls, and the story has by-the-numbers predictability. Nothing whatsoever is made of the highflown Washington setting, Daddy is supposedly Sec’y of the Treasury but might as well be a bloviating baron on an English estate, for all the changes that are rung on this tired old tale. I really do need to start cutting off this crap -- life is too short.

All Sunday afternoon I spent showing “Triple Feature: 3 Colors” to an ample and appreciative audience at the Clark. It was really worthwhile to watch Kieslowski’s Trois Couleurs in succession. And seeing each for the third time, they lose little of their enigma but reveal the precision with which they are made. Where before I might have given the edge to Red, for the sheer loveliness of Irene Jacob if nothing else, this time through I was most impressed by Blue, plunging into the sad loveliness of Juliet Binoche, and the political cast of the humor in White came through to me more forcefully. I now see the trilogy as a perfect unity. I suspect I will have more to say about Kieslowski in the future. Yes, vita brevis, but truly ars longa.

Close-Up

I finally caught up with what is frequently referred to as Abbas Kiarostami’s masterpiece. I’ve seen a lot of his films and others of the Iranian New Wave, including Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s. And while the news is abuzz with strategies, military or diplomatic, on how to deal with this charter member of the “Axis of Evil” and its new loose-cannon president and revived nuclear program, it is a good idea to watch something that normalizes rather than demonizes the Iranian people. This self-referential amusement is utterly simple and yet as infinitely complicated as an image in facing mirrors. It’s enjoyable at first viewing, but I’m quite sure reveals ever-receding depths on subsequent consideration. The story of an unemployed baker and film fan, who is mistaken for Makhmalbaf but then assumes the director’s identity and is eventually arrested for fraud, the film is an undefinable quasi-documentary of apparently real trial footage (fascinating for its portrayal of the Iranian justice system) mixed with re-creation of the preceding events using the actual subjects as actors. This is one of the great films about the making and the loving of movies, though miles apart from Day for Night or 8 1/2. It is also highly revealing about economics and class in Iran, and ponders questions of appearance and reality, truth and justice. It’s strange, but not at all a chore to watch. (1989, dvd, n.) *8*

Son Frere

Am I my brother’s keeper? -- this film asks, astringently. Two estranged brothers reconnect, when the older shows up on the doorstep of the younger, asking for help as he goes back into the hospital for tests and treatment on a mysterious blood disease. The film starts in the middle, on a seaside park bench in Brittany, with an unknown old man soliloquizing the brothers about shipwrecks, and then works its way backward and forward. This breaks up the relentless narrative drive from diagnosis to death, and allows the leisurely observation of intimate, clinical detail. Perhaps the longest and strongest scene in the film shows two night nurses shaving the torso of the one brother in prep for a splenectomy, while the other brother watches. (Was it Caravaggio who did the famous “Deposition” with the feet-first perspective?) Frankly, this is not many people’s idea of entertainment, but it is a committed application of the art of film. Patrice Chereau’s previous film, Intimacy, applied the same close-up but dispassionate attention to sex as this does to disease. I can’t think of another film as honest about the hospital approach to death, except for Wit. (If you can bear only one film of this type, watch that instead, where Mike Nichols’ impeccable direction is made transcendent by Emma Thompson’s superlative performance, in my book best of the decade by any actress.) Neither brother is what you would call likable, the younger (Eric Caravaca) insists that he is helping only because he was asked and not because of any fraternal relationship, and the older (Bruno Todeschini) is understandably querulous and complaining. Their reconciliation is more implicit than overt. This is definitely not a feel-good movie, but it will linger with you, maybe longer than you would like (as may the song that haunts the film, “Sleep” by Marianne Faithfull.) The conclusion is no “triumph of the human spirit,” but perhaps a quieter victory. (2003, dvd, n.) *7-*

Country Boys

I can’t believe I watched the whole thing. This appeared as three successive two-hour episodes of “Frontline” and extensive promotion led me to tune in with hopes of seeing the poor white trash version of Hoop Dreams. Not even remotely. This story of two rural Kentucky boys trying to make it through high school owed more to reality tv than to the documentary aesthetic that I prize. It was possible to take an interest in the two boys and their families and the alternative school they attended, but I spent a good part of the running time contemplating the film’s deficiencies as “direct cinema” or “cinema verite.” So here are some rules for documentary posed by the negative example of David Sutherland’s Country Boys (2005, PBS/T, n.), which might have been twice as good at half the length:

* You have to shoot a lot of footage, but you have to throw out almost as much, especially shots and scenes you fall in love with but which do not advance the story.

* You must maintain narrative drive, whether through Aristotelian dramatic unities or through some modern or postmodern strategy for propelling the story to its conclusion.

* Without making a game or a big deal of it, you have to acknowledge the camera’s and filmmakers’ presence on the scene.

* There is no absolute prescription against narration (or intertitles), especially when you lack the context or connection to give your scenes their full meaning.

* It’s okay to use subject voiceover to provide some narration, but you cannot simply break the bond of synchonous sound that gave first impetus to the movement of Maysles, Pennebaker, Leacock, Wiseman et al. You cannot edit a mosaic of conversation and lay it over a visual sequence of dubious connection, taking a statement from one context and putting it in the unseen mouth of the character in another scene. Aural and visual editing artistry is okay, but there needs to be a contract of authenticity.

* You should avoid excessive longshots of your characters walking through the landscape or streetscape, with a voiceover or song meant to convey meaning, or even worse conveying no meaning at all besides your own pictorial pleasure.

* You can establish your own ground rules -- whether Wiseman’s scrupulous observation, or the alternation of talking heads right at the camera, or inserting yourself provocatively in the scene as has been made famous by Michael Moore but done better by others -- but you cannot fudge the rules you have made.

* It’s not enough simply to snoop on alien lives, bemused by their stangeness and squalor. Your characters have to become emblematic while remaining idiosyncratic. You must strive for an open-eyed empathy, neither a blank stare nor a sentimental sympathy at your characters’ plight.

* Do not repeat shots or scenes or pieces of dialogue, especially when your film is languorous already. Know when enough is enough.

Saved!

Too inoffensive to count as satire, Brian Dannelly’s film is inventive enough to refresh a popular genre that has decayed from Heathers to Mean Girls. The main novelty is the setting in a Christian high school, so all the squirm-inducing scenes, from classroom to auditorium to hallways to parking lot, have a particular wrinkle to their familiar shape. The cast is okay too, from Jena Malone and Patrick Fugit (of Almost Famous), through Mandy Moore and Heather Matarazzo, to Martin Donovan and Mary-Louise Parker as the “adults.” So the overall effect is pleasant but soft. Still, there’s some topicality in Hollywood looking back at the evangelical world that demonizes yet emulates popular culture. The all-inclusive finale is sort of sappy, but along the way there is some good dirty fun. (2004, dvd, n.) *6* (MC-62, RT-60.)

Mysterious Skin

This makes a companion piece to Lilya 4-Ever, detailing child sexual abuse and prostitution from the boys’ side (much more harshly than the similarly themed L.I.E.) Gregg Araki’s adaptation of a Scott Heim novel is creepily convincing in showing a little league coach seducing one 8-year-old and raping another, and then picking up the story later, when one is a teenage hustler and the other is a befuddled dork who believes that blank in his memory means he was abducted by aliens. They follow their own damaging paths until they come together to tell their stories and achieve a fragile redemption. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is very good as the cocky boy fearlessly (and foolishly) selling his body, until he is brutalized in an exceptionally disturbing scene. Michelle Trachtenberg is his fag hag friend, but she will never, ever be as good as she was as Dawn in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (my favorite tv series of all time, for those ears I haven’t already bent with rants about the greatness of Joss Whedon’s collective masterpiece.) (2005, dvd, n.) *6+* (MC-74, RT-83.)

Shallow Grave

The antic visual style of Danny Boyle gives this gory comedy some energy, and reliably involving performers Ewan McGregor, Kerry Fox, and Christopher Eccleston make it watchable even if their characters are paper thin. They are well-off flatmates in a huge Edinburgh apartment, looking for a fourth. They dismiss a bunch of less hip candidates, but welcome a mysterious stranger, who promptly OD’s and leaves a satchel of cash under the bed. The roommates face temptation, and succumb, with predictably disastrous results. There’s gruesome fun as they get their comeuppance, but not up to the level of Boyle’s subsequent breakthrough, Trainspotting. (1994, IFC/T, n.) *5+*

Funny Ha Ha

Let’s be real. This no-budget indie fave looks bad and sounds worse. It may reek of authenticity rather than actually delivering it, but it does seem like a frontline report from twentysomethings trying to get a life after college. Andrew Bujalski is being hailed as an avatar of John Cassavetes, an enthusiasm I don’t particularly share, but there is definitely wit and perspective at work in this kitchen sink realism of postgraduate drift and angst. Kate Dollenmayer makes an attractive but believably confused protagonist, trying to find a boyfriend, a job, and a purpose in life. She’s stuck on a loser, but a loser (played by Bujalski himself) is stuck on her. She endeavors to navigate between them, while finding herself -- and that is the movie. The film was made in Boston but conveys no sense of location whatsoever, just low-rent apartments hosting random parties and awkward get-togethers. As a group portrait of a particular sliver of a generation it warrants attention, if not acclaim. I will look for Bujalski's follow up, Mutual Appreciation. (2005, dvd, n.) *6* (MC-78, RT-86.)

Before Sunrise/Before Sunset

When asked to pick my 5 favorite films of all time for Images Cinema’s newsletter, I went with the old warhorses, Truffaut’s Jules and Jim, Renoir’s Grand Illusion, Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, and Bergman’s Persona, but just to indicate I wasn’t a total old fogey, I made my final pick Richard Linklater’s more recent series of films about Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy). Having just watched the 1995 original for at least the fourth time and the 2004 sequel for the second, I’m here to confirm my choice. Both films rate a *10* in my book, but are so intimate I can hardly comment. All I can do is urge you to see them, or see them again. If you don’t love them, never take my word about movie recommendations again, because to me these small but perfect gems are what filmmaking is all about. The Godfather saga may paint a bigger canvas, but no other series of films is more stimulating or satisfying. If you think my enthusiasm is idiosyncratic, I point to Before Sunset's cumulative scores of 90 on Metacritic and 94 on Rotten Tomatoes.

The Holy Girl

Okay, this one stumps me. A. O. Scott of the NYTimes, and others, put it on their Top Ten for 2005. The reviews were mostly reverential, but I did not get the appeal at all. When the disk came from Netflix two months ago, I watched twenty minutes before conking out. With that “no late fees” appeal, I kept it around till I could do my duty. Well, it’s different, that’s for sure. Set in a hotel in provincial Argentina, where a doctors’ conference is being held, and where teenage girls are coming to terms with their sanctity and sexuality, and sometimes getting the two mixed up. The mother of one girl owns the hotel with her brother, and she vies with her daughter in a crush on one doctor. But you really have to work to figure out even this much, the storytelling and even the framing of shots are oblique to the point of obscurity. Some will tell you that Lucrecia Martel is a filmmaker to watch, but you’re on your own with this one. I didn’t hate watching it, but I couldn’t figure it out. (2004, dvd, n.) *NR* (MC-75, RT-75.)

The upside of bad movies

My mentor in film study, Professor Charles Samuels of Williams College, used to be notorious for walking out of movies in the first five or ten minutes. He was determined to see everything worth seeing, but not to waste a minute on trash. I, however, determined not to cut the performance short on anything I went into with some presupposition of quality. So if I decide to watch something, I usually watch it to the end. My god, I even made it to the end of Lethal Weapon, though it made me feel unclean to do so (but I had the sense to go nowhere near LW2 or 3 or 4.) So it was quite a statement when I couldn’t bear more than half of The Upside of Anger. If you surmise that something showcasing Joan Allen as the mother of a bevy of beautiful daughters has to have some redeeming value, let me disabuse you of that notion. I’ll forego names to protect innocent and guilty alike. This film’s one utility is to highlight by their absence all the virtues of The Squid and the Whale in detailing a family breakup, by using it only as a setup for shtick, neither funny nor true, and painful only in its ineptness.

Capote

I was glad to see this film at Images, but unlike most critics do not feel the urge to run out and recommend it to other people. Perhaps I was bothered by the way it, in the manner of Janet Malcolm, made the journalist more reprehensible than the murderer. On the plus side for one who styles himself a writer, the scenes of Truman holding court at Gotham literary cocktail parties were the most enjoyable to me. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is justly celebrated in the title role, and deserves credit for carrying the film of his high school friends, director Bennett Miller and writer Dan Futterman. Two of my favorite actors, Catherine Keener as Harper Lee and Chris Cooper as the chief inspector, contribute perfect supporting roles. The anomaly of Capote in Kansas is nicely handled, but the treatment of the central story, of random and official murder, does not compare in power to Richard Brooks’ 1967 film of In Cold Blood. I admired Capote in a number of ways, but it did not grab me and drag me into real-life horror, except at the writer’s temperament and deceit. (2005, Images, n.) *6+* (MC-89, RT-91.)

Casino

In effect a sequel to Goodfellas, this Scorsese-Pileggi collaboration starring DeNiro and Pesci tells a broader story, of the mob in 70s Vegas, with documentary brio and eye-dazzling design, and is almost as good as its precursor. Sharon Stone brings her own thunder to the cast, but there is no sympathetic character to provide our entry into this alien world of shabby glitz and violence. DeNiro’s bookmaker turned casino manager is an interesting but chilly presence. True to form, Pesci is maniacal and chilling. You learn more than you feel, except for revulsion, but this is a revealing glimpse of one aspect of American ways of business and entertainment. (1995, dvd, r.) *8* (MC-73, RT-85.)

Happy Endings

Don Roos does not duplicate the happy surprise of The Opposite of Sex, but Lisa Kudrow again demonstrates her comedic range as a mother in equivocal search for the son she gave up for adoption as a teenager, and Maggie Gyllenhaal anchors a parallel story that only collides at the very end. Bobby Cannavale and Tom Arnold are both humorous and believable as the respective partners, and Steve Coogan is delightfully witty (bring on Tristram Shandy!!!) as one of a gay couple involved with a lesbian couple and a conflict over donated sperm. The tangential stories are too complicated to recapitulate, but the performances are pungent and the script is fitfully funny. The film evaporates in the mind after viewing, but is quite entertaining to watch. (2005, dvd, n.) *6* (MC-57, RT-57.)

A River Runs Through It

The Montana scenery is beautiful, as is the filigree of cast flies over glistening rivers, and Brad Pitt is beautiful, as delivered by likewise beautiful director Robert Redford, but the emotions are muffled by a failure to connect, of the filmmakers as well as the characters, and consequently the film fails to satisfy in the end, despite being eminently watchable. Over-reliant on the voiceover of Norman Maclean’s memoir, read by Redford, the film manages to be both too explicit and inscrutable. The time and place are well rendered, but not the motivations of the characters. Even if this is a family in which things are left unsaid, the film should not leave so much hanging. (1992, dvd, r.) *6+*

2005 Year End Roundup

Herewith a quick reference to the best films that I have seen and reviewed in the past year. The first list constitutes my “best of the year” so far. The second list ranks older films I watched or re-watched over the course of the year. The grade of *7* is my threshold of recommendation, so the 2005 list contains anything graded *7-* or better. For the older films, it takes a *7+* to make the list. The month after the title indicates under which 2005 monthly archive my review can be found in the links column at the right.

New in 2005:

*8+*: The Squid and the Whale. Dec.

*8*: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. June
Syriana. Dec.
Walk the Line. Nov.

*8-*: The Constant Gardener. Oct.

*7+*: Bearing Witness. June
No Direction Home: Bob Dylan. Nov.
Good Night, and Good Luck. Nov.
Grizzly Man. Oct.
Junebug. Sept.
Mad Hot Ballroom. Oct.
My Summer of Love. July

*7*: Broken Flowers. Sept.
Look at Me (Comme une image.) Sept.
Millions. Dec.
Murderball. Dec.

*7-*: Brothers. June
Crash. Sept.
Pride and Prejudice. Dec.

Not yet seen: Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Cinderella Man, A History of Violence, Match Point, Munich, Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit, etc.

Not likely to see: Batman Begins, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Harry Potter & Goblet of Fire, King Kong.


Retrospective through 2004:

*9+*: Hoop Dreams. [1994] May

*9*: All About Eve. [1950] June
Days of Heaven. [1978] Mar.
Thelma and Louise. [1991] Apr.
The Straight Story. [1999] Mar.
Ararat. [2002] July
Vera Drake. [2004] Jan.

*9-*: All That Heaven Allows. [1955] Jan.
Aviator. [2004] Feb.

*8+*: The Philadelphia Story. [1940] Mar.
The Lady Eve. [1941] Jan.
Once Upon a Time in the West. [1968] Apr.
A Room with a View. [1986] Apr.
Waking Life. [2001] Jan.

*8*: The Little Foxes. [1941] Feb.
The Yearling. [1946] Jan.
Panic in the Streets. [1950] Oct.
Casque d’Or. [1952] Feb.
Umberto D. [1952] Aug.
Divorce -- Italian Style. [1962] July
Grey Gardens. [1976] Feb.
Philadelphia. [1993] Mar.
Nelly et Monsieur Arnaud. [1995] Jan.
Lilya 4-Ever. [2003] Nov. (or Dec.?)
Since Otar Left. [2003] Mar.
Bride and Prejudice. [2004] Mar.
Sideways. [2004] Jan.

*8-*: All the King’s Men. [1949] Oct.
The Trial of Joan of Arc. [1962] Sept.
Carnal Knowledge. [1971] Jan.
Late August, Early September. [1998] Mar.

*7+*: Queen Christina. [1933] June
Bringing Up Baby. [1938] Jan.
Born Yesterday. [1950] Feb.
Gimme Shelter. [1970] Feb.
Down by Law. [1986] Nov.
Tampopo. [1986] May
Black Robe. [1991] Jan.
Lovers on the Bridge. [1991] Jan.
Paradise Lost: Child Murders at Robin Hood Woods. [1996] Nov. (under HBO)
Kirikou and the Sorceress. [1998] Sept.
Devdas. [2002] July
Being Julia. [2004] May
Born into Brothels. [2004] Apr.
Bright Leaves. [2004] July
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. [2004] Feb.
Festival Express. [2004] Oct.
Finding Neverland. [2004] Feb.
In Good Company. [2004] Dec.
Million Dollar Baby. [2004] Feb.

The Run of the Country

So what did Peter Yates get up to in the long years after Bullitt and Breaking Away? This was his next to last, and shows a practiced directorial hand. The material is familiar but layered, a boy losing his mother and trying to find his manhood, Irish village life and the troubles on the border, a Romeo and Juliet inevitably from feuding clans. But the characters have a reality and depth that makes you content to be in their company, particularly Albert Finney as the father who is a Garda sergeant. That none of the other actors is familiar to me contributes to the air of authenticity. I’m tempted to give another look to The Playboys, also written by Shane Connaughton. The glimpses of Co. Cavan add to my secondhand impressions of Ireland, useful in collaborations with Kevin O’Hara. (1995, IFC/T, n.) *6+*

Speaking of the devil, here’s a shoutout to KO: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/076530984X/qid=1136231782/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-9113259-6210469?s=books&v=glance&n=283155