Amazonia

One thing I notice about an all-streaming diet of film and TV, is that channels take turns in my attention, then fade into insignificance, only to rebound at some point.  Technically, I’ve always found Prime Video the most glitchy of channels, but it seems to be buffering better lately.  And coincidentally, I’ve been finding a lot to watch.  Including a double-feature of recently released “Amazon originals.”  Sound of Metal (MC-81, AMZ) was not a title likely to attract me, but the Metacritic rating caught my eye, and the presence of Riz Ahmed (of The Night Of) lured me in, along with the theme of deafness.  He plays the drummer in a punk-metal duo, on tour in their deluxe RV, when suddenly, if not surprisingly with all that banging and screeching, he loses his hearing.  As a recovering addict he is lucky to find a treatment center that specializes in adaptations to the challenge of hearing loss, where he learns more than he bargained for.  Darius Marder directs his first film, co-written with his brother, in a manner that feels close to home and deeply involved in its topic.  With a lot to say, but not needing to underline its points, counting on the viewer to put the pieces together.  The sound design is perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the film, as it passes from acutely clear to subjectively muffled to electronically mediated and back again, in a way that continuously advances the story and the viewer’s understanding of the condition.  Believe me, you don’t have to be a heavy metal music fan to appreciate this film’s deep dive into silence.
 
On the other hand, Allan Ball’s Uncle Frank (MC-58, AMZ) underlines its points to its own detriment.  Half-good, or maybe even two-thirds, this film devolves into stagy formula at the end, after beginning with a fresh approach to the relationship between an intellectual teen girl bursting out of the confines of her patriarchal South Carolina family, and her uncle who has escaped into a literature professorship up north.  Their bond is sketched in nicely, and played exceptionally well, by Sophia Lillis as the niece and narrator, and Paul Bettany as the uncle, both very appealing and convincing, which I guess are my two main criteria for acting.  So I enjoyed their interactions as outsiders at a family gathering, and then again when she goes to college and their paths cross in NYC, where she finds out that he is gay, with a partner of ten years.  So far, so good, but then they all wind up back in the viper’s bosom of the SC family, and thereafter every scene seems obligatory and not convincing.
 
While on Prime, I noticed a BBC series from 2015 that I had never heard of, Life in Squares (AMZ).  This 3-part dramatic series on the Bloomsbury Group hit me right in the sweet spot, as I knew enough about the characters to take an interest but not enough to quibble with their representation.  The title comes from a Dorothy Parker quip that the group “lived in squares, painted in circles, and loved in triangles.” The focus is on the Stephen sisters, breaking out on their own in London after the death of their controlling father, largely from the perspective of Vanessa (soon to marry Clive Bell), though also following Virginia as she marries Leonard Woolf.  Vanessa is a painter, while her husband is a philandering art critic, so she falls in love with another painter, Duncan Grant.  Problem is, he’s gay, but that doesn’t stop them from having a daughter and living together for decades.  Lytton Strachey, Roger Fry, and John Maynard Keynes hover in the polyamorous background.  That’s a lot of characters to keep track of, and two sets of actors to keep straight through time shifts, though all the acting is quite good, except for one bad switchover.  James Norton as the younger Duncan Grant is certainly the most recognizable face in the ensemble, but the older does not match well.  On the other hand, Vanessa Bell is well served by Phoebe Fox and later Eve Best.  Literate and plausible, plus attractively designed, this is a must for Anglophiles.
 
Another unexpected find on Prime was the Georgian film And Then We Danced (MC-68, AMZ), in which we follow a group of young dancers in Tblisi trying out for the national dance troupe.  For much of the past decade my archaeologist son has been digging and researching in Georgia, so I always take a look at notable films from there, to get an idea about where he spends most summers.  Traditional Georgian dance has always been male-centric, but over recent years has become more rigidly masculine.  That’s a problem for our protagonist, who is more flamboyant and expressive.  A new dancer arrives as competition, and also as an attraction that soon grows overt, a risk to them both in the repressive atmosphere of Georgian society.  The performers and performances are extremely engaging, and implicitly carry much of the dramatic weight of this fraught gay romance.  Dancing both professional and spontaneous is at the center of this film, and creates an exhilarating experience.

One last Amazon original to close out this post:  Sylvie’s Love (MC-75, AMZ).  Writer-director Eugene Ashe is no Douglas Sirk, or even Todd Haynes imitating Sirk, but he does a nice job of resurrecting the 1950s “women’s picture” melodrama, in style and subject matter, with the twist that almost all the characters are Black.  Tessa Thompson has the wattage and appeal to carry it off, and Nnamdi Asomugha (former NFL cornerback, I discover) is a pleasing foil as the jazz saxophonist who falls for her, as they meet and part, and meet and part, over the period of 1957-1962, which is evoked nicely in music, clothes, and décor.  So a lot to like here, but not so much to actually believe, with the story fabricated rather than evoked.  Still a satisfying throwback, with some novel elements.