This is a year-end sort-through of a mixed grab-bag of films I’ve been watching lately.
The high point of recent viewing has been the final two films in my “Crossing Channels” film series at the Clark. Topsy-Turvy (1999) more than held up on second viewing, in my mind confirming Mike Leigh as one of the very best directors working today. This film about Gilbert & Sullivan and the creation of “The Mikado” clicks on so many levels -- in period recreation, in depiction of artistic collaboration and process, in rounded characters and swift storytelling, and finally as musical comedy. At the time it seemed a departure from Leigh’s kitchen sink realism, but now seems a precursor to Vera Drake in its deep-down portrayal of an historical era. (My rating of *9* would fall right in line with its Metacritic score of 90.)
And then there was A Hard Day’s Night (1964) -- amazing how fresh the Beatles still seem; and yet more amazing that their heyday is now forty years past. Richard Lester’s film brilliantly captures the anarchic energy that burst on the scene back then. How could you not come out of this film with a smile on your face and a bounce in your step? As playful as the film is, there is a genuine documentary quality in its depiction of a cultural phenomenon.
In happenstance, I got a good look at the scene onto which the Beatles burst, by catching up with The Entertainer (1960) again after some decades, and it really filled in the gap in British musical hall history between Gilbert & Sullivan and the Beatles. The Entertainer is hardly entertaining but remains powerful, distinguished by its pedigree and its grim authenticity. Set in seedy postwar Brighton and scripted by “last angry man” John Osborne, directed by Tony Richardson, the film reeks of the decline of Empire before the resurgent empire of Pop. Laurence Olivier is Archie Rice, last in a line of song & dance men, odious but understandably so. Joan Plowright plays his daughter (though soon to be his wife in real life), and his sons are Alan Bates and Albert Finney. His father is Roger Livesey (best known as Colonel Blimp and other characters for Powell & Pressburger.) I have to say, I “get” Archie more now than I did as a young man thirty-odd years ago.
The only other film I’ve watched lately that approaches classic status is The Double Life of Veronique (1991). This film is fascinating as Kieslowski’s transition point between Dekalog and Trois Couleurs, but it doesn’t hold up as well as the Polish ten-episode series or the French tri-color. It does boast the sublimely beautiful Irene Jacob in the double role of Polish and French girls named Veronica, and it does weave the Kieslowskian spell of mystery, if not the authentic spirituality he reaches elsewhere, so it is well worth seeing or re-seeing, but less worth trying to make sense of.
Having watched a Peter Bogdanovich documentary on John Ford, I realized there was one of “the Calvary trilogy” I’d never seen, so I TiVo’d Rio Grande (1950) when it appeared on TCM. I plan to do a John Ford series when the Clark has a Frederic Remington exhibition, but this probably won’t make the cut. It’s a sequel to Fort Apache, in that John Wayne plays the same character, aged from Captain to Colonel. For the first of four times, he is paired with Maureen O’Hara, though her red hair does not blaze in b&w the way it will in The Quiet Man. We do get Ford’s macho Irish sentimentality, but more importantly the indelible myths of the American West. What this film really does is take one back to the Fifties when the whole Western mythos loomed so large in the culture, ruling both movies and tv. Robert Altman’s exquisite McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) definitively debunked that mythos, and the only remnant on tv is the decidedly post-modern Deadwood, whose down-and-dirty poetic raunch makes Ford’s martial pieties almost laughable.
I watched three more films from Holland, but none will get into my “NL” film series next summer as part of a Berkshire-wide celebration of Dutch culture. What can I say -- those Dutch are way too kinky for my staid audience at the Clark. Paul Verhoeven’s The Fourth Man (1983) is a David-Lynchian mind-bender, about an alcoholic bisexual novelist falling into the clutches of a lusty black-widowish hairdresser hawking Delilah hair care products. Artful and funny at its best, the film finally settles for just plain weird. His Turkish Delight (1973) is still the highest grossing film in the Netherlands ever, but what it amounts to is an X-rated Love Story, wild and crazy love in a miniskirt dying young. Then, by a director who shall remain nameless since it’s no one you’ve heard of or ever will, Godforsaken (2003) comes across as lesser Scorsese with a Dutch accent, as a teenager slides from aspiring major league baseball player to minor league gangster, having fallen under the spell of a stone cold crazy who leads him on a downward spiral. This is rough stuff, that keeps its heart hidden and not on its sleeve, but does have an off-beat fascination.
Go Further (2004) and Who Killed the Electric Car? (2006) are two heart-in-the-right-place arguments that come across as illustrated lectures, rather than demonstrating the searching quality of authentic documentaries. The first follows Woody Harrelson on a bike trip down the west coast, stopping at colleges -- or wherever people will listen -- about organic food and natural living. With the obligatory stop in Oregon for his bus to meet Ken Kesey’s in the field to which it has retired, Woody is here to say that the Sixties never died. I am sympathetic both to him and his message, but the whole deal smacks of celebrity promotion, whatever the cause. The inquest into the electric car presents itself as a trial of the usual suspects -- oil and auto industries, the Bush administration -- and predictably finds them guilty. It’s an exemplary case in many ways, but would have been better with a genuine sense of discovery. There are some great characters and stories here, but only snippets of testimony are advanced. There is, for example, one young woman who had been a GM salesperson for the EV1 and had become so convinced of the worth of what she was selling, that she became an anti-GM activist when the company started recalling all the cars and shredding them. We only piece her story together by the end, after a scattering of assertions and anecdotes, when we see that she is now a spokesperson for Plug In America. That’s of questionable candor, but also questionable art, because her personal journey would clearly engage the viewer’s interest. What we get instead is a random sampling of advocates, again heavy on the celebrities, who tend to come off as greener-than-thou. Still, this is a well-told story that needed to be told.
If you want to know what I mean by “the searching quality of authentic documentaries,” you need look no further than Werner Herzog, who is turning them out at an amazing rate. Grizzly Man was the first to attract widespread interest, but it is definitely worthwhile is go back and catch up with his prolific work over the past decade. I was aware of My Best Fiend (1999), but didn’t seek it out since I was not that interested in Klaus Kinski, but this film is nothing like a celebrity profile, rather a personal exploration of the psyche of a creative madman, in a sense disguised autobiography, as all Herzog’s films are. “Personal journey” may be an overworked phrase, but this is that, in multiple ways. Werner invariably asks us to forego the usual signposts and follow him on faith, and he usually takes us to astounding places.
While studios throw their Oscar-hopefuls into theaters in an end of the year rush, films released earlier in the year have their award chances flogged by DVD releases. I caught up with two presumed crowd-pleasers in the past week. The Devil Wears Prada delivered pretty much as advertised, as an upsized episode of Sex and the City, with the bonus of the ever-reliable Meryl Streep as the imperious fashion arbiter. Whether or not she does add to her record number of nominations with this film, in combination with this year’s Prairie Home Companion she definitely reminds us that she is perennially the “best actress.” The film itself is glossy and well put together. Ann Hathaway demonstrates she can do the Princess Diaries shtick without making one gag; Stanley Tucci is excellent in a supporting role; and Emily Blunt shows that My Summer of Love was no fluke. If you simply look, and decline to think very much, this movie is entertaining to watch. *6-* (MC-62.)
On the other hand, the appeal of Little Miss Sunshine is lost on me. I just don’t get it, don’t find it funny. Maybe in a raucous, appreciative audience, I would have laughed along with the crowd, but on my own I watched in stony silence. The dysfunctional-family-on-a-road-trip shenanigans struck me as weary pranks without reference to truth of character or situation. Some more than competent performers -- Toni Collette, Steve Carell, Greg Kinnear, Alan Alda -- disguised the emptiness of the proceedings. It will be a sad commentary if this film carries the indie banner into the award season. Comparisons to You Can Count on Me are an insult not just to that fine film but to our intelligence. Studio-driven or no, this is a piece of product every bit as much as Prada, one may be glossy and one may be tatty, but both are machine made, rather than crafted by creative individuals. (My grudging *5+* belies the MC score of 80.)
On the third hand, nobody could claim The Puffy Chair is not the product of independent individuals. For better or worse, the Duplass brothers are completely responsible, as well as their parents, who produced and appear in the film. Mark stars in tandem with his girlfriend, Kathryn Aselton, while Jay works the camera, from a script they wrote together, clever in an inarticulate sort of way. Another road trip, but on this one no would-be life lessons are learned. This is an anti-romantic comedy -- we cheer as the couple breaks up before the final clinch. That girl ought to have known she had no future with a guy who addressed her as “dude.” Some gross implausibilities are woven into the ostensibly naturalistic flow of the narrative, but there is much more deadpan reality than L.M.S. can muster. (The MC score of 73 represents the usual affirmative action for indies, but I’m prepared to advance this promising debut a congratulatory *6*.)
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Saturday, December 16, 2006
All Hail "The Wire"
You probably won’t have heard it here first, but you will hear it from me with emphasis: The Wire. Is. The. Best. TV-series. Ever!
With the fourth season (out of five projected) just completed, I come not to bury The Wire but to praise it; not to recapitulate the story to date but to urge newbies to give it a try. There is an obsessive community of online partisans of the HBO show, who have discussed every character, theme, and episode at length. Check out Salon or Slate, the blogs House Next Door or Heaven and Here, or all the links therefrom, and you can find out anything you want to know about the show.
I’m also not the first to compare it to a Dickens novel, though as someone who took his senior honors seminar on the novels of Dickens, I make the comparison with some circumspection but no trepidation. The Wire is a fully-realized portrait of Baltimore, much as Bleak House is of London (and while I’m at it, let me also urge the recent BBC production of Bleak House as emphatically must-see TV on DVD.) And now we’ll be impatiently anticipating the fifth season, much as American audiences waited at the dock for the arrival from England of the latest serial installment of Dickens, to find out whether Little Nell lives or dies, or in this case, Omar and Bubbs.
The Wire is the ultimate fruition of a decades-long collaboration between David Simon and Ed Burns. Simon was a Baltimore Sun reporter and Burns was a police detective who became a primary source. Homicide begat The Corner, which begat The Wire. Simon first wrote the book, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, which was developed by Baltimore-based director Barry Levinson into a well-regarded network tv series that ran for seven seasons. Then Simon and Burns together wrote The Corner, a look at the street-level drug trade from the perspective of a family destroyed by drug use, which was made into an Emmy-winning six-hour miniseries on HBO, directed by Charles Dutton.
With that track record, Simon and Burns were able to develop their own show for HBO, and that creative control raised their work to a sublime level. And what a creative team they assembled -- a company of actors you probably never heard of, who indelibly inhabit their characters without a false note in the whole consort -- a rotation of directors with feature film experience -- and a stable of writers, with such thoroughbreds as Richard Price, Dennis Lehane, and George Pelecanos!
But Simon and Burns lead the mission -- to tell nothing but the truth and the whole truth, and to do it in an uncompromising way, too smart to be dumbed down. Not just about the drug trade or the police, but about all the institutions of the city -- politics, schools, unions. So if you watch television to put your mind to sleep, or at least on automatic pilot, then stay off The Wire. On so many levels you will have to work to understand it -- the language, the plot, the system, the implications.
The Wire has to be “read” with all the concentration and persistence that you would bring to a classic novel. It’s not made up of tidy episodes on which you can drop in at random. You really nead to start at Chapter 1 and work your way through. Seasons 1-3 are now available on DVD, from Netflix or a high-quality video store. You might be able to catch up with a re-run of Season 4 on HBO. And then you’ll be with the rest of us, waiting on the dock for our ship to come in, the one with the fifth and final season in its hold.
Of course, you can bide your time, by immediately going back to watch from the beginning again, because I can assure you, you didn’t get it all the first time through. I can’t imagine a show with greater repeatability, you’ll learn much more on each viewing. Oh sure, you might say, I’ve got 60-odd hours to devote to a TV show, then turn around and do it all over again. Well, time is a precious commodity, but The Wire rewards every hour devoted to it.
It borrows the long-form narrative attraction of the soap opera or telenovela -- you live with these characters long enough to become intimately attached. It has the immemorial appeal of tales of gangsters and police. But it comes out of a tradition of reportorial accuracy and community commitment, leavened by intelligent, skeptical analysis, that carries it far beyond the canny lure of its storytelling. And oh yeah -- it’s funny as hell.
I couldn’t get into character or plot without going on forever, so I’ll conclude this urgent recommendation with the briefest overview for what you’ll be getting yourself into if you follow my advice. Season 1 is about a group of Baltimore poe-lease getting up on “the wire” to infiltrate a gang and bring down a pair of drug lords. Each organization is shown from top to bottom, with parallel dynamics. Season 2 shifts to the port and, before the Dubai Port World uproar, really brought home the reality of container shipping. Season 3 is in essence a rematch of the first, but infinitely ramified, with more serious attention to civic issues than a dozen op-ed pages. Season 4 reflects Ed Burns’ personal journey from the police to the schools -- after 20 years as a detective he became a teacher -- with focus on four middle-schoolers and how they might drift into “the game,” in parallel with the ripped-from-the-headlines story of a mayoralty race in Bodymore, Murderland.
But over all is the presiding genius of David Simon, who not only writes and produces but even shows up in online discussions to clarify and amplify points of discussion or controversy.
Demotic brilliance. That’s the salient characteristic of The Wire -- speaking of the people in the language of the people, and doing it with glittering intelligence. Telling hard lessons in civic engagement, clothed in emotive storytelling -- you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll quake in your boots, but most of all -- you’ll think.
With the fourth season (out of five projected) just completed, I come not to bury The Wire but to praise it; not to recapitulate the story to date but to urge newbies to give it a try. There is an obsessive community of online partisans of the HBO show, who have discussed every character, theme, and episode at length. Check out Salon or Slate, the blogs House Next Door or Heaven and Here, or all the links therefrom, and you can find out anything you want to know about the show.
I’m also not the first to compare it to a Dickens novel, though as someone who took his senior honors seminar on the novels of Dickens, I make the comparison with some circumspection but no trepidation. The Wire is a fully-realized portrait of Baltimore, much as Bleak House is of London (and while I’m at it, let me also urge the recent BBC production of Bleak House as emphatically must-see TV on DVD.) And now we’ll be impatiently anticipating the fifth season, much as American audiences waited at the dock for the arrival from England of the latest serial installment of Dickens, to find out whether Little Nell lives or dies, or in this case, Omar and Bubbs.
The Wire is the ultimate fruition of a decades-long collaboration between David Simon and Ed Burns. Simon was a Baltimore Sun reporter and Burns was a police detective who became a primary source. Homicide begat The Corner, which begat The Wire. Simon first wrote the book, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, which was developed by Baltimore-based director Barry Levinson into a well-regarded network tv series that ran for seven seasons. Then Simon and Burns together wrote The Corner, a look at the street-level drug trade from the perspective of a family destroyed by drug use, which was made into an Emmy-winning six-hour miniseries on HBO, directed by Charles Dutton.
With that track record, Simon and Burns were able to develop their own show for HBO, and that creative control raised their work to a sublime level. And what a creative team they assembled -- a company of actors you probably never heard of, who indelibly inhabit their characters without a false note in the whole consort -- a rotation of directors with feature film experience -- and a stable of writers, with such thoroughbreds as Richard Price, Dennis Lehane, and George Pelecanos!
But Simon and Burns lead the mission -- to tell nothing but the truth and the whole truth, and to do it in an uncompromising way, too smart to be dumbed down. Not just about the drug trade or the police, but about all the institutions of the city -- politics, schools, unions. So if you watch television to put your mind to sleep, or at least on automatic pilot, then stay off The Wire. On so many levels you will have to work to understand it -- the language, the plot, the system, the implications.
The Wire has to be “read” with all the concentration and persistence that you would bring to a classic novel. It’s not made up of tidy episodes on which you can drop in at random. You really nead to start at Chapter 1 and work your way through. Seasons 1-3 are now available on DVD, from Netflix or a high-quality video store. You might be able to catch up with a re-run of Season 4 on HBO. And then you’ll be with the rest of us, waiting on the dock for our ship to come in, the one with the fifth and final season in its hold.
Of course, you can bide your time, by immediately going back to watch from the beginning again, because I can assure you, you didn’t get it all the first time through. I can’t imagine a show with greater repeatability, you’ll learn much more on each viewing. Oh sure, you might say, I’ve got 60-odd hours to devote to a TV show, then turn around and do it all over again. Well, time is a precious commodity, but The Wire rewards every hour devoted to it.
It borrows the long-form narrative attraction of the soap opera or telenovela -- you live with these characters long enough to become intimately attached. It has the immemorial appeal of tales of gangsters and police. But it comes out of a tradition of reportorial accuracy and community commitment, leavened by intelligent, skeptical analysis, that carries it far beyond the canny lure of its storytelling. And oh yeah -- it’s funny as hell.
I couldn’t get into character or plot without going on forever, so I’ll conclude this urgent recommendation with the briefest overview for what you’ll be getting yourself into if you follow my advice. Season 1 is about a group of Baltimore poe-lease getting up on “the wire” to infiltrate a gang and bring down a pair of drug lords. Each organization is shown from top to bottom, with parallel dynamics. Season 2 shifts to the port and, before the Dubai Port World uproar, really brought home the reality of container shipping. Season 3 is in essence a rematch of the first, but infinitely ramified, with more serious attention to civic issues than a dozen op-ed pages. Season 4 reflects Ed Burns’ personal journey from the police to the schools -- after 20 years as a detective he became a teacher -- with focus on four middle-schoolers and how they might drift into “the game,” in parallel with the ripped-from-the-headlines story of a mayoralty race in Bodymore, Murderland.
But over all is the presiding genius of David Simon, who not only writes and produces but even shows up in online discussions to clarify and amplify points of discussion or controversy.
Demotic brilliance. That’s the salient characteristic of The Wire -- speaking of the people in the language of the people, and doing it with glittering intelligence. Telling hard lessons in civic engagement, clothed in emotive storytelling -- you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll quake in your boots, but most of all -- you’ll think.
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
Those Romanians, what a bunch of cards! This “comedy” follows a sixtyish man for the eight hours between the time he calls an ambulance for the headaches and vomiting he is experiencing, and his death as he lies naked on a hospital gurney, waiting for neurosurgery at the fourth hospital he has visited in the course of an infernal night (not for nothing is his first name “Dante” to go with the suggestion of “Lazarus” in his last.) He is escorted through this hell of medical indifference by an ambulance attendant, fiftyish but flame-haired, initially impatient but finally the helpless old man’s only humane advocate. The film unfolds in what feels like real time, as an unholy mash-up of Frederick Wiseman’s documentary Hospital and a low-energy E.R. in Bucharest. The 38-year-old director Cristi Puiu cites Rohmer as another influence, and this film is certainly talk-talk-talk. Frankly, it took me three evenings to get through this Death, so I can hardly join in the chorus of raves it has received. It’s not purely a matter of art house masochism (e.g., who knew so many Romanian doctors were beautiful young babes?), but if you demand entertainment from your movies, this is not for you. What humor there is, is black and deadpan. The action -- or inaction -- is artfully choreographed, with handheld camerawork that makes the most of the low budget, and with economical and revealing dialogue and characterization, but loitering in hospitals through the night at death’s door is not my idea of fun. (2005, dvd, n.) *NR* (MC-84.)
Dutch treats?
Berkshire arts organizations are collaborating on a joint program for next summer, to celebrate Dutch culture, so I decided to look at films from the Netherlands for a possible series at the Clark. Never aware of Holland as a hotbed of cinema, I started with two of the the best reviewed I could find.
Twin Sisters (De Tweeling.) Though this is basically Beaches-with-Nazis, I was strangely tolerant of its heart-tugging. I have not in fact seen Beaches, but it’s rather legendary as a women’s relationship weepie based on a bestselling novel, which is certainly the quality that got this film Miramax distribution and an Oscar nom for best foreign film. It begins in 1926 when the two sisters are peremptorily separated at their father’s funeral, one to a wealthy Dutch aunt, one to a dirtbag German Catholic uncle. The film weaves together their separate journeys through life and intermittent reunions, played by three pairs of actresses at different ages, with the young women in the middle being attractive enough to hold the whole thing together. Now this is unabashed melodrama, so I was also tolerant of the music, which was appropriately Germanic and operatic. Through the decades of the sometimes creaky plot, the sisters’ relationship becomes interestingly emblematic of that between Holland and Germany, close but antithetical, distant but primordial. Not a great film by any means, but I wouldn’t rule it out of a potential series. (2002, dvd, n.)
Soldier of Orange. Paul Verhoeven is the only Dutch director that I have ever heard of, because he came to America for Robocop and went on to a Hollywood blockbuster career. This film also explores the relationship between Holland and Germany through the crucible of World War II. It’s based on the memoir of an aristocratic young student who becomes involved in the Resistance, and eventually returns from service as spy and RAF bomber as an aide to Queen Wilhelmina. The film begins in 1938 with a hazing ritual for freshman, out of which six young men become friends, with each of them typifying a different relationship to the Germans when the war comes. Rutger Hauer is actually quite nuanced as the lead character, and Jeroen Krabbe is also good as his best friend, making this a character study as well as a war thriller, not to mention Verhoeven’s usual focus on sex. I will check out others of his Dutch films, but wouldn’t mind showing this. (1977, dvd, n.)
Twin Sisters (De Tweeling.) Though this is basically Beaches-with-Nazis, I was strangely tolerant of its heart-tugging. I have not in fact seen Beaches, but it’s rather legendary as a women’s relationship weepie based on a bestselling novel, which is certainly the quality that got this film Miramax distribution and an Oscar nom for best foreign film. It begins in 1926 when the two sisters are peremptorily separated at their father’s funeral, one to a wealthy Dutch aunt, one to a dirtbag German Catholic uncle. The film weaves together their separate journeys through life and intermittent reunions, played by three pairs of actresses at different ages, with the young women in the middle being attractive enough to hold the whole thing together. Now this is unabashed melodrama, so I was also tolerant of the music, which was appropriately Germanic and operatic. Through the decades of the sometimes creaky plot, the sisters’ relationship becomes interestingly emblematic of that between Holland and Germany, close but antithetical, distant but primordial. Not a great film by any means, but I wouldn’t rule it out of a potential series. (2002, dvd, n.)
Soldier of Orange. Paul Verhoeven is the only Dutch director that I have ever heard of, because he came to America for Robocop and went on to a Hollywood blockbuster career. This film also explores the relationship between Holland and Germany through the crucible of World War II. It’s based on the memoir of an aristocratic young student who becomes involved in the Resistance, and eventually returns from service as spy and RAF bomber as an aide to Queen Wilhelmina. The film begins in 1938 with a hazing ritual for freshman, out of which six young men become friends, with each of them typifying a different relationship to the Germans when the war comes. Rutger Hauer is actually quite nuanced as the lead character, and Jeroen Krabbe is also good as his best friend, making this a character study as well as a war thriller, not to mention Verhoeven’s usual focus on sex. I will check out others of his Dutch films, but wouldn’t mind showing this. (1977, dvd, n.)
Two films not worth blogging
John Schlesinger’s Yanks (1979, Sund/T, n.) I’d been meaning to see for a long time, for any light it might shed on my own personal pre-history, as the child of an English warbride. Trouble was, way too much light was shed; instead of being lit like Vera Drake for example, whatever effort was made at period restoration was drowned in studio wattage. And the music! In the hands of a Douglas Sirk, melodrama can really appeal to me. But when you just ladle on the strings to goose emotions that aren’t there, it’s oh-so-icky. A period soundtrack might have worked, but this is just orchestral drygoods, sold by the yard. So -- gesamtkunstwerk okay, but otherwise be very abstemious with musical cues that can’t be rationalized as live sound. And the formulaic, sentimental storytelling! How can a telegraphed punch take so long to land. And to tell you the truth, Richard Gere and Lisa Eichhorn did not remind me much of me mum and dad. Gere was a sergeant warming up to be “an officer and a gentleman”; Eichhorn was lovely but not convincingly British. In a parallel story, the always enchanting Vanessa Redgrave is involved with an American air force officer, played unappealingly by William Devane, who does not borrow charm from his frequent JFK impersonations. But I have to admit I only fast-forwarded though a couple of the most ludicrous moments.
Then I watched The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting (1978, dvd, n.) because Time Regained had led me to more Raul Ruiz and this seemed to have potential for future showing at Clark. Maybe so, but someone else will have to second the nomination. This film may be too smart for me. Is it a fascinating critical analysis of a fictional painter, or a parody of fatuous intellectualization? Or both? And how do you tell? Whatever -- it’s very French (though Ruiz became Parisian as a refugee from the Allende coup in Chile.) Six paintings are all the work that is left of a student of Gerome, whose career had been ruined by scandal after one Salon exhibition from which he was forced to withdrawn. An obsessed collector tries to analyze and recreate the scandal, by literally walking through the paintings as tableaux vivants, hypothesizing the missing painting that will explain all the rest. Though I have neither read the book nor seen the film of The Da Vinci Code, Ruiz’s film may come across as a highbrow precursor, in unpacking the esoteric mysteries of painting. Who knows? It’s just the prejudice of an old philosophy student, but I get skeptical the minute I hear the name Nietzsche. Still, this Hypothesis is undeniably well-crafted.
Then I watched The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting (1978, dvd, n.) because Time Regained had led me to more Raul Ruiz and this seemed to have potential for future showing at Clark. Maybe so, but someone else will have to second the nomination. This film may be too smart for me. Is it a fascinating critical analysis of a fictional painter, or a parody of fatuous intellectualization? Or both? And how do you tell? Whatever -- it’s very French (though Ruiz became Parisian as a refugee from the Allende coup in Chile.) Six paintings are all the work that is left of a student of Gerome, whose career had been ruined by scandal after one Salon exhibition from which he was forced to withdrawn. An obsessed collector tries to analyze and recreate the scandal, by literally walking through the paintings as tableaux vivants, hypothesizing the missing painting that will explain all the rest. Though I have neither read the book nor seen the film of The Da Vinci Code, Ruiz’s film may come across as a highbrow precursor, in unpacking the esoteric mysteries of painting. Who knows? It’s just the prejudice of an old philosophy student, but I get skeptical the minute I hear the name Nietzsche. Still, this Hypothesis is undeniably well-crafted.
Friday, December 08, 2006
The Queen
There are plenty of Oscar hopefuls I haven’t seen yet, but if there is a better candidate for Best Picture, then this will be a very good year. Helen Mirren is a likely shoo-in as Best Actress, to get an Oscar for portraying Elizabeth II hard upon winning an Emmy for playing Elizabeth I in the HBO miniseries. Heck, she deserves the award just for the way she walks her dogs. Overall, her performance goes well beyond convincing, to completely empathetic. You know just what the old mum (that’s how ma’am is pronounced, not to rhyme with ham, and be sure you remember that in her presence) is feeling, but more amazingly -- you care. The real surprise, though, is just how good a film director Stephen Frears has mounted around her, based on a canny script by Peter Morgan. Personally I was utterly indifferent to the death of Princess Di back in ’97 -- I figured she just had gone to a better place, where she could date Elvis and double with Marilyn and James Dean. But this film uses the occasion for a continuously interesting, witty, and ultimately moving exploration of monarchy and modernity, politics and media, tradition and family dynamics. Michael Sheen is marvelous as Tony Blair, poignantly contrasting his eager early time in power with his current Iraq-scarred endgame. The rest of the cast is impeccable as well. This intimate recreation of a single critical week in recent British history is convincing and suggestive, well-judged in every respect. Without going into further descriptive detail, I urge you to see it for yourself and let its delightful surprises unfold for you, and its tendrils of implication ramify. (2006, Images, n.) *9* (MC-91.)
Street Fight
This stirring and provocative documentary follows the 2002 mayoral election in Newark, NJ. No film is a one-man-job, but Marshall Curry deserves all credit for this, and deserved his Oscar nomination for best documentary feature last year. Basically just him and his little DV camera following the story for more than a year, then spending another year in a closet with his editing computer, cutting 200 hours of shooting to less than two. The DVD arrives with a timely update on results from the subsequent 2006 election, and one of the producers of the film turns out to be Netflix. This little package portends big changes in the business of film production and distribution. And the film is a pleasure to watch. We mainly follow insurgent Cory Booker, sort of a younger and paler Barack Obama -- went to Stanford on a football scholarship, Rhodes Scholar and Yale Law grad -- as he mounts a campaign against the entrenched mayor, Sharp James, who became a political force after the Newark riots in ’67, then spent 16 years on the City Council and 16 more as mayor, the firebrand become machine boss. I first heard about this film on a Wire discussion website, and it offers instructive comparison with the Carcetti vs. Royce campaign for mayor of Baltimore in that superlative HBO series. Street Fight is a heartening parable of democracy at work, both in its subject and the means of its making, even when the reality depicted is quite disheartening. (2005, dvd, n.) *7+* (MC-88.)
In the same vein, the PBS “Independent Lens” doc Two Square Miles depicts a grassroots civic campaign to keep an immense cement plant from being built by a Swiss conglomerate in nearby Hudson, NY, on the banks of the river that spawned a whole school of art. Again, both the movement and the movie are about democratic empowerment. It’s a messy process, but it works for us. But you can see how hard it would be to export the mechanics to a place where democracy has not been long enshrined as a cultural ideal.
In the same vein, the PBS “Independent Lens” doc Two Square Miles depicts a grassroots civic campaign to keep an immense cement plant from being built by a Swiss conglomerate in nearby Hudson, NY, on the banks of the river that spawned a whole school of art. Again, both the movement and the movie are about democratic empowerment. It’s a messy process, but it works for us. But you can see how hard it would be to export the mechanics to a place where democracy has not been long enshrined as a cultural ideal.
Filling in the gaps
Amidst the comings and goings of the holiday season, I seem to be watching movies to fill various gaps, rather than devoting concerted concentration to cin-e-mah, so this “salon” will be a chatty conversation.
Not to say that I haven’t been watching some very good things lately. After seeing 49 Up, I went back and watched the first three episodes, which I had never seen, having come into Michael Apted’s engrossing documentary series at 28 Up. It doesn’t hurt to watch them out of sequence, though the revelations of time will be relative, strike you differently. The whole thing is a spiral you can enter at any point. Cumulatively, this is certainly one of the greatest films of all time, and I will be pitching the Clark to show the entire series over the course of six weekly screenings.
One evening I happened not to have any Netflix disks on hand, so out of a choice offered by a companion the group decided on Prime, a title as unmemorable and inconsequential as the movie itself, which came out a year or so ago and sank without a trace. This so-so rom-com features an amusing turn by Meryl Streep as a Jewish mother/therapist, whose boychik has fallen for an older shiksa, who just happens to be one of her patients, Uma Thurman. These ladies are always pleasant to watch, but I am forgetting the name of the writer-director, not to hold this film against him in the future. People who want to like this might reference Woody Allen -- maybe, but only the sapless Woodys.
Another fill-in from the local library was Gates of Heaven (1978). I’m a big enough fan of Errol Morris to give this early film another look, but it certainly did not earn its cover blurb from Roger Ebert as one of the ten best films -- I think but can hardly believe he said -- “of all time.” I can tick off three better from Morris himself, and maybe more: Thin Blue Line; The Fog of War; Fast, Cheap, & Out of Control. This film about pet cemeteries certainly embodies some of Morris’s persistent obsessions, and his method of subverting the ostensible subject of his documentary, but he does that more significantly with Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time. Anyway, Gates of Heaven is cruelly funny in its way, and has plenty to say about family dynamics and the domestication of death. But I wouldn’t want to oversell it.
Another gap was filled when one of the visiting scholars at the Clark picked Next of Kin for the Fellow’s Favorite film series. I had somehow missed Atom Egoyan’s first film, even when I picked him for my own series last year: “10 Under 50: Young Directors to Watch.” In Next of Kin (1984), the 23-year-old announces most of themes and obsessions that will infuse his films over the next two decades, with peaks in Exotica and Ararat and the only real misfire in his latest, Where the Truth Lies. This first film is more than promising but less than revelatory.
On a Sunday evening with no news to watch during dinner, I channel-surfed to The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and since my companion had not seen it yet, we watched to the end. With this and the American version of The Office, which I’ve never watched because I’m too attached to the Ricky Gervais original, Steve Carrell has sprung from the Daily Show to wide recognition, but I want to give props to writer-director Judd Apatow for making this painfully funny and not-too-painfully true film, in the wake of the great but short-lived tv series, Freaks & Geeks, which I urge you to view on DVD.
And speaking of great tv series, I am re-viewing the first season of The Wire on DVD, even as I wait impatiently for the final weekly episodes of season four on HBO. After next week’s climax I will write more about this absolute must-see. I remain a rabid partisan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and renew my enthusiasm whenever I happen to revisit an episode, but next to The Wire I gotta admit it’s just kid stuff. We are privileged to be witnessing a work in progress that transcends media and genre, what can only be described as a 66-hour documentary novel on film, a profile of a city (Bodymore, Murderland) and its institutions, and the people who work within and against the rules. It’s informative and intense, brilliantly scripted and acted; a visual, aural, and intellectual workout. You feel me? Ah be back at you, mos’ def.
Not to say that I haven’t been watching some very good things lately. After seeing 49 Up, I went back and watched the first three episodes, which I had never seen, having come into Michael Apted’s engrossing documentary series at 28 Up. It doesn’t hurt to watch them out of sequence, though the revelations of time will be relative, strike you differently. The whole thing is a spiral you can enter at any point. Cumulatively, this is certainly one of the greatest films of all time, and I will be pitching the Clark to show the entire series over the course of six weekly screenings.
One evening I happened not to have any Netflix disks on hand, so out of a choice offered by a companion the group decided on Prime, a title as unmemorable and inconsequential as the movie itself, which came out a year or so ago and sank without a trace. This so-so rom-com features an amusing turn by Meryl Streep as a Jewish mother/therapist, whose boychik has fallen for an older shiksa, who just happens to be one of her patients, Uma Thurman. These ladies are always pleasant to watch, but I am forgetting the name of the writer-director, not to hold this film against him in the future. People who want to like this might reference Woody Allen -- maybe, but only the sapless Woodys.
Another fill-in from the local library was Gates of Heaven (1978). I’m a big enough fan of Errol Morris to give this early film another look, but it certainly did not earn its cover blurb from Roger Ebert as one of the ten best films -- I think but can hardly believe he said -- “of all time.” I can tick off three better from Morris himself, and maybe more: Thin Blue Line; The Fog of War; Fast, Cheap, & Out of Control. This film about pet cemeteries certainly embodies some of Morris’s persistent obsessions, and his method of subverting the ostensible subject of his documentary, but he does that more significantly with Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time. Anyway, Gates of Heaven is cruelly funny in its way, and has plenty to say about family dynamics and the domestication of death. But I wouldn’t want to oversell it.
Another gap was filled when one of the visiting scholars at the Clark picked Next of Kin for the Fellow’s Favorite film series. I had somehow missed Atom Egoyan’s first film, even when I picked him for my own series last year: “10 Under 50: Young Directors to Watch.” In Next of Kin (1984), the 23-year-old announces most of themes and obsessions that will infuse his films over the next two decades, with peaks in Exotica and Ararat and the only real misfire in his latest, Where the Truth Lies. This first film is more than promising but less than revelatory.
On a Sunday evening with no news to watch during dinner, I channel-surfed to The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and since my companion had not seen it yet, we watched to the end. With this and the American version of The Office, which I’ve never watched because I’m too attached to the Ricky Gervais original, Steve Carrell has sprung from the Daily Show to wide recognition, but I want to give props to writer-director Judd Apatow for making this painfully funny and not-too-painfully true film, in the wake of the great but short-lived tv series, Freaks & Geeks, which I urge you to view on DVD.
And speaking of great tv series, I am re-viewing the first season of The Wire on DVD, even as I wait impatiently for the final weekly episodes of season four on HBO. After next week’s climax I will write more about this absolute must-see. I remain a rabid partisan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and renew my enthusiasm whenever I happen to revisit an episode, but next to The Wire I gotta admit it’s just kid stuff. We are privileged to be witnessing a work in progress that transcends media and genre, what can only be described as a 66-hour documentary novel on film, a profile of a city (Bodymore, Murderland) and its institutions, and the people who work within and against the rules. It’s informative and intense, brilliantly scripted and acted; a visual, aural, and intellectual workout. You feel me? Ah be back at you, mos’ def.
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