Oy. In retrospect this was probably the wrong movie to be the sixth one I'd sat through during a thirty-two hour stretch. My mind grows numb just trying to write about ut. That probably would have happened anyway, no matter when I saw this movie, but it makes it extra hard.
Let's get the good stuff out of the way: the animation of the The Spirit is superb. If you like this type of eye candy, or are a fan of animation in general, then seeing this movie may well be worth your while. Go for it.
But twenty minutes into it, I felt a glaze over my eyes that made it hard to digest it all. Why the hell don't I care about these characters?
Here are some possibilities: it's the same retread story about the (phony) problem of "crime run wild on the streets" and a shadowy hero who fights it because the cops can't, and in which the hero and the villain are "twin" manifestations of each other (The Dark Knight, Max Payne, Punisher: War Zone). This particular storyline is like the Spirit himself: you just can't kill the son-of-a-bitch. The best we can hope for is to cut up the pieces and mail them far away from each other.
The movie wasn't so much a story, as the story of a story. To wit: "one upon a time there a movie plot. The movie plot had a superhero and supervillain. You get the idea, because you've seen this before, so I don't need to explain much further. The hero of the story was very, very noble and good. The villain of the story was angry and bad. They fought each other fiercely and eventually, at the end of the movie plot, the hero triumphed. The end (of the story of the story)."
But I tried, dammit, giving it my all to dig up a bit of salvation from this movie that didn't depend on visual effects. I guess I was just too tapped out. Moreover, I just couldn't help cracking up every time the Spirit launched into a soliloquy about "his city," each one of which seemed like a parody of the lyrics of "Under the Bridge" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
The hollow fragmentation of the story and the characters is perhaps the real message of this movie. Maybe that's what it was really about---how degraded we are in 2008, not in a real street-level crime sense, but in a paucity-of-narrative sense. The hero was created by the villain just for amusement. Even the archvillain's henchmen are literally just clones, comic and moronic carbon copies who blithely follow robotic killing instructions, and who differ from each other only by the name on their t-shirts.
We have no real stories left, and thus we are dead in our souls like the hero, forcibly resurrected over and over against our will to watch the same meaningless plots over and over again. The only color in our world comes from our atrocious villains who have no motivation other the naked psychopathy, which itself is the last remaining thing we can understand as cultural coin.
In that sense, the best line of the movie comes from the archvillain, Samuel L. Jackson's Octopus (isn't that name ripped off from Spiderman?). Clad in an outrageous Nazi SS uniform, he tortures the unkillable hero. As he does so, he blurts out his motivation-of-the-moment: "I'm going to take over the world...and then everything WILL FINALLY MAKE SENSE!"
Indeed. I finally got it. And with that, I stumbled out of the theater, as if dug up from a grave, and drove my trusty black car into the night. My Christmas gift card was finally used up, and in doing so I'd seen all but one of the new releases that week. Three for three, two days in a row. My completely arbitrary victory was complete.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Marley and Me
As I walked out into the midday winter sun after Doubt, I faced a dilemma. On the one hand, there was a reason why I rarely see more than one movie in a day. It is that I very much like to give each movie its own "breathing space" for that day, to let the emotional residue sink in, and to let the story play out in my head. This is especially true for masterpieces like Doubt. On the other hand, I really wanted to go for another three-movie day.
I went for the best compromise I could muster, which was to spend the hour-or-so break until the next round of shows to take a walk, and to linger in Dunkin' Donuts drinking coffee and meditating about what I had just seen. Still it felt like too short of a time when I was back in the ticket line of the lobby of the AMC multiplex, purchasing a ticket for Marley and Me. Perhaps the switch to comedy would be less injurious to the post-movie meditation phase than a drama.
This is the movie I had called "the dog movie" to my sister, while advising her that perhaps it was not as much a family movie as a romantic comedy. In doing so, I spoiled the movie for her, since I already knew the ending from clicking on this link (warning spoiler, but I'm going to spoil it below anyway, so go ahead, it's funny).
My hunch about the movie would turn about to be correct, but you couldn't tell that from the crowd. Marley and Me had turned out to be the biggest grossing release of Christmas Day, and the auditorium---the largest in the entire multiplex and the same one where I had seen Four Christmases all by my lonesome---was crammed full of families with young children, all toting popcorn and treats and filling up the aisles all the way down to the front.
I found a seat along the aisle halfway up the lefthand section, but like the day before, I found myself moving, and for exactly the same reason: the slow torturous crinkling of the paper sack as the children behind me fished out every last nugget of popcorn. When they started talking to each other as well, I leapt out of my seat and slinked into the fifth row, with the great big mugs of Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston looming above. Happy Holidays!
As I said, the movie sort of masquerades as a family movie about a dog. Really it's the tale of a contemporary man-boy in his attempt to finally grow up as he turns forty years old. Yes, that story, the one that's in half the romantic comedies made these days. The dog story serves as a platform on which to tell this other story.
The man-boy, like all postmodern men, has no direction in his life. He is being led through his life by his wife, who is the one with "the plan," which he dutifully follows, asking her what each next step is. Even in his career, he is adrift, being pushed and pulled in various directions by his wife and his grumpy-but-lovable boss (Alan Arkin brightens up any movie).
His lack of (classical) direction, even despite the passing years and the birth of three (gasp) children, will result in mounting frustration and anger from his wife. One of the best lines of the movie occurs when she is trying to get him to pick out a color for the paint in their son's room. "I could use a little help in making a decision here!" she screams. Such is the anguish of the postmodern woman, summed up in one sentence.
The dog (Marley) functions as a symbolic manifestation of his lack of manhood. The animal is undisciplined and unable to be disciplined. We learn that the wife is the true "master." The husband plays second fiddle, and is not even the Alpha Male in his own home. When it comes time to neuter the dog, it is of course the wife who must make the decision to "cut his balls off."
The dog even fades out for much of Act Two, while the movie focuses on the increasingly troubled marraige. The animal returns to prominence in Act Three, when the husband, having reached the Doomsday Age of 40 and feels his best gettin' laid years are behind him, begins to contemplate actually following through on something resembling a life plan. He actually makes a proactive career move, and the dog springs back into importance as he totes his family off to Pennsylvania to live in a giant suburban house with a sprawling yard. The man-boy is finally growing up.
But be warned: the price of seeing this movie is to be exposed to a horrible and hideous truth which may damage your soul forever (spoilers follow here).
Let me explain. As I sat below the big wide screen, I was right in front of a twenty-something young man with his date. At every sight gag involving the dog, he made a little braindead stoner chuckle, occasionally mumbling something like, "that reminds me of my dog, heh, heh." Believe me, this was a lot better than the crinkling popcorn sack.
As the credits rolled, I began to recap my thoughts. Here we had a movie, ostensibly about a Golden Retriever who has the great fortune of getting adopted by a loving couple who raise him with all the pleasures any dog could want, including getting fed, getting to run free, and being adored by children. He spends many years in the company of this family, with no real hardships. Eventually he grows old, very old, and his fur turns white.
As it happens (brace yourself), dogs do not live forever. They are mortal creatures, and eventually old dogs will pass away. Some, like the dog in this film, may be so lucky as to be taken care of, get second chances from the vet, and when the time finally comes, be put down painlessly with loving gentle care.
Shocking, I know. Well, it was too much for the twenty something behind me. As he scooted out into the aisle during the credits, he just repeating to his date, "That's the saddest movie I've ever seen in my whole life."
I went for the best compromise I could muster, which was to spend the hour-or-so break until the next round of shows to take a walk, and to linger in Dunkin' Donuts drinking coffee and meditating about what I had just seen. Still it felt like too short of a time when I was back in the ticket line of the lobby of the AMC multiplex, purchasing a ticket for Marley and Me. Perhaps the switch to comedy would be less injurious to the post-movie meditation phase than a drama.
This is the movie I had called "the dog movie" to my sister, while advising her that perhaps it was not as much a family movie as a romantic comedy. In doing so, I spoiled the movie for her, since I already knew the ending from clicking on this link (warning spoiler, but I'm going to spoil it below anyway, so go ahead, it's funny).
My hunch about the movie would turn about to be correct, but you couldn't tell that from the crowd. Marley and Me had turned out to be the biggest grossing release of Christmas Day, and the auditorium---the largest in the entire multiplex and the same one where I had seen Four Christmases all by my lonesome---was crammed full of families with young children, all toting popcorn and treats and filling up the aisles all the way down to the front.
I found a seat along the aisle halfway up the lefthand section, but like the day before, I found myself moving, and for exactly the same reason: the slow torturous crinkling of the paper sack as the children behind me fished out every last nugget of popcorn. When they started talking to each other as well, I leapt out of my seat and slinked into the fifth row, with the great big mugs of Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston looming above. Happy Holidays!
As I said, the movie sort of masquerades as a family movie about a dog. Really it's the tale of a contemporary man-boy in his attempt to finally grow up as he turns forty years old. Yes, that story, the one that's in half the romantic comedies made these days. The dog story serves as a platform on which to tell this other story.
The man-boy, like all postmodern men, has no direction in his life. He is being led through his life by his wife, who is the one with "the plan," which he dutifully follows, asking her what each next step is. Even in his career, he is adrift, being pushed and pulled in various directions by his wife and his grumpy-but-lovable boss (Alan Arkin brightens up any movie).
His lack of (classical) direction, even despite the passing years and the birth of three (gasp) children, will result in mounting frustration and anger from his wife. One of the best lines of the movie occurs when she is trying to get him to pick out a color for the paint in their son's room. "I could use a little help in making a decision here!" she screams. Such is the anguish of the postmodern woman, summed up in one sentence.
The dog (Marley) functions as a symbolic manifestation of his lack of manhood. The animal is undisciplined and unable to be disciplined. We learn that the wife is the true "master." The husband plays second fiddle, and is not even the Alpha Male in his own home. When it comes time to neuter the dog, it is of course the wife who must make the decision to "cut his balls off."
The dog even fades out for much of Act Two, while the movie focuses on the increasingly troubled marraige. The animal returns to prominence in Act Three, when the husband, having reached the Doomsday Age of 40 and feels his best gettin' laid years are behind him, begins to contemplate actually following through on something resembling a life plan. He actually makes a proactive career move, and the dog springs back into importance as he totes his family off to Pennsylvania to live in a giant suburban house with a sprawling yard. The man-boy is finally growing up.
But be warned: the price of seeing this movie is to be exposed to a horrible and hideous truth which may damage your soul forever (spoilers follow here).
Let me explain. As I sat below the big wide screen, I was right in front of a twenty-something young man with his date. At every sight gag involving the dog, he made a little braindead stoner chuckle, occasionally mumbling something like, "that reminds me of my dog, heh, heh." Believe me, this was a lot better than the crinkling popcorn sack.
As the credits rolled, I began to recap my thoughts. Here we had a movie, ostensibly about a Golden Retriever who has the great fortune of getting adopted by a loving couple who raise him with all the pleasures any dog could want, including getting fed, getting to run free, and being adored by children. He spends many years in the company of this family, with no real hardships. Eventually he grows old, very old, and his fur turns white.
As it happens (brace yourself), dogs do not live forever. They are mortal creatures, and eventually old dogs will pass away. Some, like the dog in this film, may be so lucky as to be taken care of, get second chances from the vet, and when the time finally comes, be put down painlessly with loving gentle care.
Shocking, I know. Well, it was too much for the twenty something behind me. As he scooted out into the aisle during the credits, he just repeating to his date, "That's the saddest movie I've ever seen in my whole life."
Doubt
When I pulled up in front of the Tyngsboro multiplex, it was still the flush of the bright sunny morning. I felt as if I were arriving at work. But heck, I wasn't going to see Tom Cruise or Will Smith or Adam Sandler. going to see a good movie now, with Philip Seymour Fucking Hoffman! Could it get any better than this?
Doubt---here's a movie that speaks my language. The setting is fall of 1964, in the wake of the Ur moment of American change---the Kennedy assassination, an event that is explicitly invoked by Hoffman's priest character in the opening minutes. Moreover, it is the very hinge of the changeover from the classical to postmodern in our culture, during the critical two-year span 1964-65 when broadcast color television debuted (see Chernus).
The pivotal nature of this moment is embodied in the lead character, a principal of a Catholic school in the Bronx, a hardened nun played by Meryl Streep. She is intolerant and mean, but perhaps with a purpose. She sees the world disintegrating around her and unshamedly fights to sustain it, even though she knows it makes her despised by her pupils. I can't root against her. She hates ballpoint pens, because they force the writer to press down on the paper like monkeys. As someone who can write only with Sanford Uniball 0.2mm Ultrafine pens, I completely understand this position. She knows that the easiness of technology will turn us into postmodern subhumans. It's a losing battle, and her soul burns from the torment of it.
Yet at the same time she is actually what she hates. The basic tenet of the classical paradigm is the Code of Honor. It not only a personal, individual code, but it is also an outward societal agreement. In the first respect, it governs what an individual will or won't do. In the second societal sense, it commands that we accept others (adults, at least) as honorable to their word unless proven otherwise. Her tragedy arises from the fact that she has lost sight of this, even as she claims to uphold the old order. She applies the prisonlike rules of the schoolroom to her fellow adults. She accuses without evidence, based solely on suspicion. The new era has truly begun, one in which we lost our collective presumption of adult honor.
But is the leap worth it? Do we deserve this loss? Is there something horrible going on which demands that we toss aside evidence and act upon suspicion alone? Which is the greater good, especially when the welfare of children are at stake? These are the 1964 questions that the movie raises, and which refuses to answer, because there is no easy answer, unless you are firmly committed to one camp or another.
This is not about how "truth is relative" or any postmodern crap like that. It's about (in part) the appropriate way in which we determine truth, and how that can depend on the character of the era in which we find ourselves.
I loved this movie. At an hour and forty-five minutes, it absolutely flew by. I had read the play by John Patrick Shanley last week, and was pleased to see how well he had expanded his own creation as director of the film, filling out the minor characters which are only mentioned in the play, but which do not appear. It was a both a perfect period piece of the mid-1960s, and a movie about the present day.
The only anachronistic touch seemed to be the utter rapidity with which Streep's character concludes that Seymour's priest has been sexually abusing the black child Donald. In the 1960s, such "shameful" ideas would probably been arrived at slightly more reluctantly, which perhaps was part of the problem, given what we know now. This treatment differed from the play script, and seemed more 2004 than 1964, but it is forgivable considering the need to communicate to contemporary audiences in such a short running time (On a side note, consider watching Samuel Fuller's brutal masterpiece The Naked Kiss, ironically from October 1964, for one of the few frank discussions of this topic from that era).
The acting was first rate. Hoffman is a national treasure, and Streep---my God!---gave perhaps her best performance of her career (although I haven't seen all her movies, so I can't say). Amy Adams is one of my favorites, being that she's a Colorado girl who got her start acting in high school there. Among the principals, she has perhaps the easiest role of the film, but does everything she is supposed to do. Viola Davis, as the boy's mother, has landed a well-deserved Golden Globe nomination.
Doubt---here's a movie that speaks my language. The setting is fall of 1964, in the wake of the Ur moment of American change---the Kennedy assassination, an event that is explicitly invoked by Hoffman's priest character in the opening minutes. Moreover, it is the very hinge of the changeover from the classical to postmodern in our culture, during the critical two-year span 1964-65 when broadcast color television debuted (see Chernus).
The pivotal nature of this moment is embodied in the lead character, a principal of a Catholic school in the Bronx, a hardened nun played by Meryl Streep. She is intolerant and mean, but perhaps with a purpose. She sees the world disintegrating around her and unshamedly fights to sustain it, even though she knows it makes her despised by her pupils. I can't root against her. She hates ballpoint pens, because they force the writer to press down on the paper like monkeys. As someone who can write only with Sanford Uniball 0.2mm Ultrafine pens, I completely understand this position. She knows that the easiness of technology will turn us into postmodern subhumans. It's a losing battle, and her soul burns from the torment of it.
Yet at the same time she is actually what she hates. The basic tenet of the classical paradigm is the Code of Honor. It not only a personal, individual code, but it is also an outward societal agreement. In the first respect, it governs what an individual will or won't do. In the second societal sense, it commands that we accept others (adults, at least) as honorable to their word unless proven otherwise. Her tragedy arises from the fact that she has lost sight of this, even as she claims to uphold the old order. She applies the prisonlike rules of the schoolroom to her fellow adults. She accuses without evidence, based solely on suspicion. The new era has truly begun, one in which we lost our collective presumption of adult honor.
But is the leap worth it? Do we deserve this loss? Is there something horrible going on which demands that we toss aside evidence and act upon suspicion alone? Which is the greater good, especially when the welfare of children are at stake? These are the 1964 questions that the movie raises, and which refuses to answer, because there is no easy answer, unless you are firmly committed to one camp or another.
This is not about how "truth is relative" or any postmodern crap like that. It's about (in part) the appropriate way in which we determine truth, and how that can depend on the character of the era in which we find ourselves.
I loved this movie. At an hour and forty-five minutes, it absolutely flew by. I had read the play by John Patrick Shanley last week, and was pleased to see how well he had expanded his own creation as director of the film, filling out the minor characters which are only mentioned in the play, but which do not appear. It was a both a perfect period piece of the mid-1960s, and a movie about the present day.
The only anachronistic touch seemed to be the utter rapidity with which Streep's character concludes that Seymour's priest has been sexually abusing the black child Donald. In the 1960s, such "shameful" ideas would probably been arrived at slightly more reluctantly, which perhaps was part of the problem, given what we know now. This treatment differed from the play script, and seemed more 2004 than 1964, but it is forgivable considering the need to communicate to contemporary audiences in such a short running time (On a side note, consider watching Samuel Fuller's brutal masterpiece The Naked Kiss, ironically from October 1964, for one of the few frank discussions of this topic from that era).
The acting was first rate. Hoffman is a national treasure, and Streep---my God!---gave perhaps her best performance of her career (although I haven't seen all her movies, so I can't say). Amy Adams is one of my favorites, being that she's a Colorado girl who got her start acting in high school there. Among the principals, she has perhaps the easiest role of the film, but does everything she is supposed to do. Viola Davis, as the boy's mother, has landed a well-deserved Golden Globe nomination.
Back-to-back Threepeats?
Friday was such an awesome day, allowing me to cut into the list of new releases. But there were so many new ones that I felt I had only made a small dent. Could I possibly do it again? Could I see three movies again, for the second day in a row? I even had a few bucks left on the gift certificate card my sister gave me.
On Friday evening I figured the idea would seem foolish in the morning, but when I woke up on Saturday morning, I had plenty of energy and decided to head back up to Tyngsboro again. Maybe I'd only see one. Maybe two. Who knows? I'd take it as it went.
At least I wanted to get there for the pre-noon showing again. Paying four bucks for a first run movie is just so sweet. After coffee, I put on my jacket and my three-year-old niece asked me "What movie are you going to see, Uncle Matt?"
"I'm going to see Doubt," I told her.
"Dow-ow-out?" she replied, quizically.
"Exactly," I said.
On Friday evening I figured the idea would seem foolish in the morning, but when I woke up on Saturday morning, I had plenty of energy and decided to head back up to Tyngsboro again. Maybe I'd only see one. Maybe two. Who knows? I'd take it as it went.
At least I wanted to get there for the pre-noon showing again. Paying four bucks for a first run movie is just so sweet. After coffee, I put on my jacket and my three-year-old niece asked me "What movie are you going to see, Uncle Matt?"
"I'm going to see Doubt," I told her.
"Dow-ow-out?" she replied, quizically.
"Exactly," I said.
Bedtime Stories
After the second movie of the day, I took stock of myself. Could I really make it a three-movie day? I had charged only ten dollars and fifty cents off the AMC gift certificate card from my sister. But another? I was in uncharted waters, but the answer was "yes."
After a heavy meal of back-to-back two hour dramas, I thought I needed a comedy for desert. There were several choices, but after Will Smith and Tom Cruise, it was just too tempting: I just had to finish up with Adam Sandler. It seemed perfect in a masochistic "I survived this" kind of way.
With an hour and a half break until the late afternoon show, I foolishly decided to drive up a half mile to the Barnes and Noble on the New Hampshire side of the state line. In the hellish post-Christmas traffic, I spent the next twenty minutes getting there, but unable to turn left into the parking lot, so I abandoned and turned around. By the time I got back to the multiplex parking lot, I had just enough time to grab a bite to eat and buy my ticket.
I was looking forward to Bedtime Stories like a crucifixion. Sandler is one of my all-time least favorite actors. If I weren't going to see every movie, there is no way you would catch me in the theater paying money for this, even with a gift certificate card.
Making it worse, the auditorium was crammed full of families with kids, making it hard to find a decent seat. "Serves me right for going to see a family comedy on the opening weekend." I settled for a seat close-in along the left-hand side. It took a few minutes to adjust to the angle.
After the previews, the Disney logo came up and the movie started. What happened after that can only be described as...magic. It must have been the Christmas seasonal spirit at work, because not only did I begin to enjoy this movie, but by the end of it, I downright embraced it.
Huh? Am I actually writing this? What happened inside that auditorium that could turn this Sandler-hating Grinch into a fan of this movie?
The story is about a young boy, the son of a Los Angeles motel owner from the old days, who grows up to be a handyman (Sandler) in the hotel which was built on the grounds of the previous motel. Already we have a wonderful metaphor for the transition from the classical era of Hollywood (old motel) to the postmodern (new high-rise hotel). But that's just the beginning.
When Sandler's character was a boy, his father (Jonathan Pryce) told him bedtime stories in which the boy was the protagonist. This is trick I learned ironically the last time I was in Los Angeles, helping some friends move. One of their sons fell and cut his forehead open. We wound up in the emergency room of the Pasadena hospital, and I was drafted to keep their injured son preoccupied with an impromptu story about pirates. Since I'm a horrible storyteller, I succeeded by making him and his younger brother the main characters, and letting him help create the story on-the-fly by repeatedly asking him: "So what do you think happened next?" Anyone with kids probably knows the same trick.
Anyway, in the movie, the grown boy (Sandler) is called upon by fate to babysit his sister's young children for a week, and circumstances (lack of television, i.e. absence of the postmodern) force him to tell them bedtime stories. Unlike his father, however, Sandler's character puts himself as the main character, and his stories suck.
Thus in narrative terms, Sandler represents the degraded contemporary man, who has not outgrown his childish egocentric nature. That he has been demoted from owner/manager (his father) to lowly handyman is a perfect outward expression of this.
The story will demand, of course, that he outgrow his latent boyhood and discover the principles of classical manhood as embodied in his deceased motel-owner father (who fittingly continues to serve as the disembodied narrator of the framing story). Likewise we know that in doing so, he will rise to become the manager of the sparkling postmodern hotel and restore justice to it. Moreover, since this is a romantic comedy, his newfound manhood and sense of honor will result in his finding the love of his life.
How will get there? Through the use of narrative, of course. Over the course of the week he spends with his niece and nephew, he discovers that whenever the children tell part of the bedtime story, those parts of the story find a way of coming true the next day. At first, being the inferior man, he attempts to exploit this for egocentric gain, but every such attempt backfires. But despite himself, his resolution to let the children tell the story eventually will win the day.
The "coming true" part of the story was where I felt danger approaching. From the trailers, it seemed like this movie would be crammed with willy-nilly magic, such as an improbable torrent of gumballs from the sky. I was more than pleasantly surprised to find that the movie remained within the naturalistic world, and that everything happens through the "magic of coincidence." Nothing wrong with that. The only truly goofy part of the movie are sight gags involving the CGI'd pet guinea pig, who may or may not be the actual source of the "magic." Leaving things up to doubt like that is very classical, by the way.
Thus the story is not only about the classical-postmodern duality (motel paradigm and decline of the son), but is explicitly about the power of narrative to restore the classical order in reborn form. Moreover it suggests that such narrative power is inherent in the human spirit (contained in the souls of children), and that humans yearn for storytelling as way not only to understand the world, but to shape their own lives in ways that seem like magic. The key is to let go of the idea of oneself as the lead character in the epic of the world. As a result, you can have the best of both the classical and postmodern worlds.
At the end of the movie, I couldn't help think that Sandler was the perfect choice for the role. Inside the strait jacket of Disney, he flourished. He should consider working only with Disney from now on.
When I got back to the farmstead, just in time for dinner, I told my sister and her kids about the movies I'd seen. My sister thought maybe they'd all go see a movie the next day, maybe "the dog movie." I set them straight with a better suggestion.
After a heavy meal of back-to-back two hour dramas, I thought I needed a comedy for desert. There were several choices, but after Will Smith and Tom Cruise, it was just too tempting: I just had to finish up with Adam Sandler. It seemed perfect in a masochistic "I survived this" kind of way.
With an hour and a half break until the late afternoon show, I foolishly decided to drive up a half mile to the Barnes and Noble on the New Hampshire side of the state line. In the hellish post-Christmas traffic, I spent the next twenty minutes getting there, but unable to turn left into the parking lot, so I abandoned and turned around. By the time I got back to the multiplex parking lot, I had just enough time to grab a bite to eat and buy my ticket.
I was looking forward to Bedtime Stories like a crucifixion. Sandler is one of my all-time least favorite actors. If I weren't going to see every movie, there is no way you would catch me in the theater paying money for this, even with a gift certificate card.
Making it worse, the auditorium was crammed full of families with kids, making it hard to find a decent seat. "Serves me right for going to see a family comedy on the opening weekend." I settled for a seat close-in along the left-hand side. It took a few minutes to adjust to the angle.
After the previews, the Disney logo came up and the movie started. What happened after that can only be described as...magic. It must have been the Christmas seasonal spirit at work, because not only did I begin to enjoy this movie, but by the end of it, I downright embraced it.
Huh? Am I actually writing this? What happened inside that auditorium that could turn this Sandler-hating Grinch into a fan of this movie?
The story is about a young boy, the son of a Los Angeles motel owner from the old days, who grows up to be a handyman (Sandler) in the hotel which was built on the grounds of the previous motel. Already we have a wonderful metaphor for the transition from the classical era of Hollywood (old motel) to the postmodern (new high-rise hotel). But that's just the beginning.
When Sandler's character was a boy, his father (Jonathan Pryce) told him bedtime stories in which the boy was the protagonist. This is trick I learned ironically the last time I was in Los Angeles, helping some friends move. One of their sons fell and cut his forehead open. We wound up in the emergency room of the Pasadena hospital, and I was drafted to keep their injured son preoccupied with an impromptu story about pirates. Since I'm a horrible storyteller, I succeeded by making him and his younger brother the main characters, and letting him help create the story on-the-fly by repeatedly asking him: "So what do you think happened next?" Anyone with kids probably knows the same trick.
Anyway, in the movie, the grown boy (Sandler) is called upon by fate to babysit his sister's young children for a week, and circumstances (lack of television, i.e. absence of the postmodern) force him to tell them bedtime stories. Unlike his father, however, Sandler's character puts himself as the main character, and his stories suck.
Thus in narrative terms, Sandler represents the degraded contemporary man, who has not outgrown his childish egocentric nature. That he has been demoted from owner/manager (his father) to lowly handyman is a perfect outward expression of this.
The story will demand, of course, that he outgrow his latent boyhood and discover the principles of classical manhood as embodied in his deceased motel-owner father (who fittingly continues to serve as the disembodied narrator of the framing story). Likewise we know that in doing so, he will rise to become the manager of the sparkling postmodern hotel and restore justice to it. Moreover, since this is a romantic comedy, his newfound manhood and sense of honor will result in his finding the love of his life.
How will get there? Through the use of narrative, of course. Over the course of the week he spends with his niece and nephew, he discovers that whenever the children tell part of the bedtime story, those parts of the story find a way of coming true the next day. At first, being the inferior man, he attempts to exploit this for egocentric gain, but every such attempt backfires. But despite himself, his resolution to let the children tell the story eventually will win the day.
The "coming true" part of the story was where I felt danger approaching. From the trailers, it seemed like this movie would be crammed with willy-nilly magic, such as an improbable torrent of gumballs from the sky. I was more than pleasantly surprised to find that the movie remained within the naturalistic world, and that everything happens through the "magic of coincidence." Nothing wrong with that. The only truly goofy part of the movie are sight gags involving the CGI'd pet guinea pig, who may or may not be the actual source of the "magic." Leaving things up to doubt like that is very classical, by the way.
Thus the story is not only about the classical-postmodern duality (motel paradigm and decline of the son), but is explicitly about the power of narrative to restore the classical order in reborn form. Moreover it suggests that such narrative power is inherent in the human spirit (contained in the souls of children), and that humans yearn for storytelling as way not only to understand the world, but to shape their own lives in ways that seem like magic. The key is to let go of the idea of oneself as the lead character in the epic of the world. As a result, you can have the best of both the classical and postmodern worlds.
At the end of the movie, I couldn't help think that Sandler was the perfect choice for the role. Inside the strait jacket of Disney, he flourished. He should consider working only with Disney from now on.
When I got back to the farmstead, just in time for dinner, I told my sister and her kids about the movies I'd seen. My sister thought maybe they'd all go see a movie the next day, maybe "the dog movie." I set them straight with a better suggestion.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Valkyrie
Crossing that godawful Will Smith movie off my list before the clock had struck 1:00 p.m. really put some wind in my sails. I was definitely ready for round two, and now I could begin cutting into the brand new releases that had come out the day before.
What to see now? I took a break by hiking a short distance across the parking lot through the heaps of melting ice to a Dunkin' Donuts, where I sampled their egg-and-cheese croissant. At under three bucks, it seemed like a really good deal.
By the time I got back to the theater, I had made up my mind. With so much energy and enthusiasm, and having weathered the worst of it, I figured I'd make it two-for-two with scientologists that day by seeing Valkyrie, the new Tom Cruise movie. How bad could it be really?
The only thing that turned me off was the idea of the inevitable atmosphere of the plot. I figured it would be two hours of on-the-edge-of-my-seat stomach-in-knots tension. It was something I had to be in the mood for, but it was just too tempting a target to cross off my list. So I waited in line again and bought a ticket.
The large-bodied woman taking tickets remembered me. "Making it a two movie day?" she asked. "So far," I replied.
It was showing in one of the bigger auditoriums, half-full by time I took my seat. About halfway through the movie, I had to relocate because the guy behind me was fishing out kernels of popcorn one-by-one from the paper bag, taking about thirty seconds each time with loud crinkling right behind my ears. In those cases, I always just give up and move. Well, at least it wasn't as bad as what happened in Philadelphia the day before.
As for the movie, well it was just damn amazing! Absolutely astounding! In two hours it managed to completely change the way I look at Nazis and World War II.
Before I yesterday, I had long been under the impression that Nazi Germany was a society filled with enormous fear and tension that the secret police would have you executed for the slightest demonstration of dissent. Among the sources of that foolish misapprehension were the dozens and dozens of wartime American movies I've seen, all of which were no doubt propaganda. For example, Hotel Berlin (1945) from Warner Brothers was about Germans in Germany during the war. Raymond Massey, one the great "heavy" character actors of all time, plays the dissenting "good" German. Until Valkyrie, it was one of my favorite movies.
Now I know the truth, that all that stuff about the Gestapo hauling people away for even the suspicion of dissent was all clap-trap. As Mr. Cruise thankfully points out, Germans were quite willing to express opinions against Hitler and the Nazi government. Sure, if they were planting a bomb inside Hitler's plane, they might get a little nervous, but if they are simply in the plot-hatching stage, there was no need to take any extra precautions other than closing the drapes when you were having conspiratorial meetings.
It makes me wander just how the Germans could have gone along with Hitler, given their officer corps in the 1940s was staffed with swaggering postmodern swashbucklers like Tom Cruise, willing to express their in-yer-face opinions about the Nazis to their superiors right on the battlefield. But then, the movie seems to indicate that other than the Jewish thing, the worst thing about Hitler was that he was a bad military commander.
He really wasn't much to be feared, all in all. Heck, all that stuff about Prussian stiffness was just soooo wrong. Forget about all those spiffy Nazi uniforms. His officers didn't even bother to stand at attention on the tarmack for him, but just stood with hunched shoulders like lazy high school students in rumpled poorly fitting wool clothes.
As for tension, this movie had about as much as The Apple Dumpling Gang. It seems that if not for a few missed screw-ups, the whole plot against Hitler would have succeeded on a grand scale, because so many people were willing to stand up to him. The ones that did never really were in much danger, that is, until they were being shot or hanged from meat hooks. What a surprise twist! Didn't see that coming at all. You'd think Hitler could have been a little more chill about it all.
In all seriousness, it really tears me up inside to savage a movie like this, since I wish Hollywood would make a lot more historical dramas than it does. Among other things, the story itself was decent. The script probably was OK. It was just seasoned with all the wrong flavor, pouring sugar where there should have been salt. Take a look at director Bryan Singer's filmography and you may sense why he was a poor choice, especially with out-of-control Mr. Operating Thetan Cruise chewing up the scenery. Despite Cruise's strutting, however, there were a few good performances that actually felt like they could have been German officers, including Tom Wilkinson. But god damn---that eyepatch!
Maybe I just missed the point of the movie. At the very beginning, the titles are all in German, and then are transformed into English. Likewise Cruise begins speaking in German as he writes his journal, then switches to English. Maybe this movie was intended as a "translation" of the Nazis into contemporary vernacular that Americans of 2008 can relate to. After all, we're the Nazis now, right?
What to see now? I took a break by hiking a short distance across the parking lot through the heaps of melting ice to a Dunkin' Donuts, where I sampled their egg-and-cheese croissant. At under three bucks, it seemed like a really good deal.
By the time I got back to the theater, I had made up my mind. With so much energy and enthusiasm, and having weathered the worst of it, I figured I'd make it two-for-two with scientologists that day by seeing Valkyrie, the new Tom Cruise movie. How bad could it be really?
The only thing that turned me off was the idea of the inevitable atmosphere of the plot. I figured it would be two hours of on-the-edge-of-my-seat stomach-in-knots tension. It was something I had to be in the mood for, but it was just too tempting a target to cross off my list. So I waited in line again and bought a ticket.
The large-bodied woman taking tickets remembered me. "Making it a two movie day?" she asked. "So far," I replied.
It was showing in one of the bigger auditoriums, half-full by time I took my seat. About halfway through the movie, I had to relocate because the guy behind me was fishing out kernels of popcorn one-by-one from the paper bag, taking about thirty seconds each time with loud crinkling right behind my ears. In those cases, I always just give up and move. Well, at least it wasn't as bad as what happened in Philadelphia the day before.
As for the movie, well it was just damn amazing! Absolutely astounding! In two hours it managed to completely change the way I look at Nazis and World War II.
Before I yesterday, I had long been under the impression that Nazi Germany was a society filled with enormous fear and tension that the secret police would have you executed for the slightest demonstration of dissent. Among the sources of that foolish misapprehension were the dozens and dozens of wartime American movies I've seen, all of which were no doubt propaganda. For example, Hotel Berlin (1945) from Warner Brothers was about Germans in Germany during the war. Raymond Massey, one the great "heavy" character actors of all time, plays the dissenting "good" German. Until Valkyrie, it was one of my favorite movies.
Now I know the truth, that all that stuff about the Gestapo hauling people away for even the suspicion of dissent was all clap-trap. As Mr. Cruise thankfully points out, Germans were quite willing to express opinions against Hitler and the Nazi government. Sure, if they were planting a bomb inside Hitler's plane, they might get a little nervous, but if they are simply in the plot-hatching stage, there was no need to take any extra precautions other than closing the drapes when you were having conspiratorial meetings.
It makes me wander just how the Germans could have gone along with Hitler, given their officer corps in the 1940s was staffed with swaggering postmodern swashbucklers like Tom Cruise, willing to express their in-yer-face opinions about the Nazis to their superiors right on the battlefield. But then, the movie seems to indicate that other than the Jewish thing, the worst thing about Hitler was that he was a bad military commander.
He really wasn't much to be feared, all in all. Heck, all that stuff about Prussian stiffness was just soooo wrong. Forget about all those spiffy Nazi uniforms. His officers didn't even bother to stand at attention on the tarmack for him, but just stood with hunched shoulders like lazy high school students in rumpled poorly fitting wool clothes.
As for tension, this movie had about as much as The Apple Dumpling Gang. It seems that if not for a few missed screw-ups, the whole plot against Hitler would have succeeded on a grand scale, because so many people were willing to stand up to him. The ones that did never really were in much danger, that is, until they were being shot or hanged from meat hooks. What a surprise twist! Didn't see that coming at all. You'd think Hitler could have been a little more chill about it all.
In all seriousness, it really tears me up inside to savage a movie like this, since I wish Hollywood would make a lot more historical dramas than it does. Among other things, the story itself was decent. The script probably was OK. It was just seasoned with all the wrong flavor, pouring sugar where there should have been salt. Take a look at director Bryan Singer's filmography and you may sense why he was a poor choice, especially with out-of-control Mr. Operating Thetan Cruise chewing up the scenery. Despite Cruise's strutting, however, there were a few good performances that actually felt like they could have been German officers, including Tom Wilkinson. But god damn---that eyepatch!
Maybe I just missed the point of the movie. At the very beginning, the titles are all in German, and then are transformed into English. Likewise Cruise begins speaking in German as he writes his journal, then switches to English. Maybe this movie was intended as a "translation" of the Nazis into contemporary vernacular that Americans of 2008 can relate to. After all, we're the Nazis now, right?
Seven Pounds
If I was going to see three movies in one day, I had to get started early.
The AMC in Tyngsboro had Friday matinees starting at 10:30 a.m. (only four bucks before noon!), so I hotfooted out of the driveway of the farmstead while the morning was still fresh. A half hour later I was in the parking lot of the multiplex. The traffic on Middlesex Road had been even worse than before Christmas.
First up: a release left over from last week, the one I had been dreading most: Seven Pounds.
Have you seen this yet? Has the ending been spoiled for you yet? Do you not care if it is spoiled? I'm assuming you said yes to at least one of those questions, because I have to talk about the story itself.
There is a scene towards the end of the movie in which Will Smith is in a bathtub full of ice while being stung repeatedly by a deadly jellyfish. He is writhing in extreme pain and agony as he dies. This pretty much describes how I felt for two hours fidgeting back and forth in my seat as I watched this movie.
Not that discomfort is necessary bad in a movie. It can be a good thing, if that is what is intended. But my discomfort was due to the fact that this movie is as close to being unwatchable as anything I have seen in a long time.
I won't go into every detail about why it sucks, because frankly, I don't want to waste so much time typing. Just go ahead and read A. O. Scott's review in the New York Times. To wit:
But I think it behooves me to discuss ways that the movie might have actually worked.
From a narrative point of view, the most glaring and hideous fault of the movie is that there is no particular reason why Smith's character has to kill himself when he does. Why was it necessary in the Aristotlean sense for him to take his life at that particular moment? Where was the urgency? There was, in fact, none.
What should have happened? The most important thing that should have happened in the movie, but didn't, was that Ben Thomas (Will Smith) should have been transformed by his falling in love with Emily Posa (Rosario Dawson). He should have begun to experience joy in life again. He would have begun to question his whole scheme of committing suicide and donating his organs to others in order to make amends for the car accident he caused.
He would have come to the point of realizing that he could help others better by living instead of dying. Perhaps blind Ezra (Woody Harrelson) could have had his sight healed by other means, or could have told Thomas that he preferred to stay as he is.
Just when we think that Thomas has decided to keep living, something would happen that would force him, with absolutely no other option, to follow through on his plan, probably to save Emily, because no other option was available to him.
None of that happened. Smith's character doesn't really experience anything. He isn't transformed by giving his house away. He isn't transformed by "falling in love." He isn't transformed by any of the people he meets. He is one of the most static protagonists that I have seen in a long time.
From a thematic point of view, the most cloying aspect of this film is its endorsement that we can and should judge the "worthiness" of others to receive life-changing gifts. This is very anticlassical, by the way, since in the old paradigm, it was assumed that only the Almighty can make such judgments. It was not for nothing that Oprah really loved this movie. Are you nauseated yet?
This was a stupid and horrible movie, living up to every negative thing I have heard about it. Another point of agreement between A.O. Scott and me: this movie is actually a horror movie, but doesn't realize it.
So there you have it, a ghastly horror tale masquerading as a feel-good holiday story about the power of giving to others. I can't think of a better metaphor for the United States of America at the end of 2008. Could this be the Movie of the Year?
The AMC in Tyngsboro had Friday matinees starting at 10:30 a.m. (only four bucks before noon!), so I hotfooted out of the driveway of the farmstead while the morning was still fresh. A half hour later I was in the parking lot of the multiplex. The traffic on Middlesex Road had been even worse than before Christmas.
First up: a release left over from last week, the one I had been dreading most: Seven Pounds.
Have you seen this yet? Has the ending been spoiled for you yet? Do you not care if it is spoiled? I'm assuming you said yes to at least one of those questions, because I have to talk about the story itself.
There is a scene towards the end of the movie in which Will Smith is in a bathtub full of ice while being stung repeatedly by a deadly jellyfish. He is writhing in extreme pain and agony as he dies. This pretty much describes how I felt for two hours fidgeting back and forth in my seat as I watched this movie.
Not that discomfort is necessary bad in a movie. It can be a good thing, if that is what is intended. But my discomfort was due to the fact that this movie is as close to being unwatchable as anything I have seen in a long time.
I won't go into every detail about why it sucks, because frankly, I don't want to waste so much time typing. Just go ahead and read A. O. Scott's review in the New York Times. To wit:
Frankly, though, I don’t see how any review could really spoil what may be among the most transcendently, eye-poppingly, call-your-friend-ranting-in-the-middle-of-the-night-just-to-go-over-it-one-more-time crazily awful motion pictures ever made.
But I think it behooves me to discuss ways that the movie might have actually worked.
From a narrative point of view, the most glaring and hideous fault of the movie is that there is no particular reason why Smith's character has to kill himself when he does. Why was it necessary in the Aristotlean sense for him to take his life at that particular moment? Where was the urgency? There was, in fact, none.
What should have happened? The most important thing that should have happened in the movie, but didn't, was that Ben Thomas (Will Smith) should have been transformed by his falling in love with Emily Posa (Rosario Dawson). He should have begun to experience joy in life again. He would have begun to question his whole scheme of committing suicide and donating his organs to others in order to make amends for the car accident he caused.
He would have come to the point of realizing that he could help others better by living instead of dying. Perhaps blind Ezra (Woody Harrelson) could have had his sight healed by other means, or could have told Thomas that he preferred to stay as he is.
Just when we think that Thomas has decided to keep living, something would happen that would force him, with absolutely no other option, to follow through on his plan, probably to save Emily, because no other option was available to him.
None of that happened. Smith's character doesn't really experience anything. He isn't transformed by giving his house away. He isn't transformed by "falling in love." He isn't transformed by any of the people he meets. He is one of the most static protagonists that I have seen in a long time.
From a thematic point of view, the most cloying aspect of this film is its endorsement that we can and should judge the "worthiness" of others to receive life-changing gifts. This is very anticlassical, by the way, since in the old paradigm, it was assumed that only the Almighty can make such judgments. It was not for nothing that Oprah really loved this movie. Are you nauseated yet?
This was a stupid and horrible movie, living up to every negative thing I have heard about it. Another point of agreement between A.O. Scott and me: this movie is actually a horror movie, but doesn't realize it.
So there you have it, a ghastly horror tale masquerading as a feel-good holiday story about the power of giving to others. I can't think of a better metaphor for the United States of America at the end of 2008. Could this be the Movie of the Year?
A Three-Movie Day?
By the day after Christmas, it had been three full days since I had seen Australia in Tyngsboro. Meanwhile six, count 'em six, new releases had rolled into the multiplexes around here, filling up my slate again just as I was beginning to finally catch up.
The day before the candy in my Christmas stocking had been augmented by my favorite present of the day---a twenty-five dollar AMC gift certificate card from my younger sister in Colorado. I decided on Friday to put the card to use, and attempt to spend the entire day up in Tyngsboro using it up, and making a dent in the list of new releases. Could I possibly see three movies in one day? I was going to find out if I could.
The day before the candy in my Christmas stocking had been augmented by my favorite present of the day---a twenty-five dollar AMC gift certificate card from my younger sister in Colorado. I decided on Friday to put the card to use, and attempt to spend the entire day up in Tyngsboro using it up, and making a dent in the list of new releases. Could I possibly see three movies in one day? I was going to find out if I could.
Australia
On Tuesday, with two days to spare, I finally got around to doing my Christmas shopping, which meant a trip to New Hampshire. Around this part of Massachusetts, everyone heads up to the Granite State for a simple reason: there is no sales tax. Just across the state line, the outskirts of Nashua are slathered with a huge shopping mall and string of big box retailers that include every national chain that you can imagine. Not surprisingly, on Tuesday it was an utter madhouse.
The mid-afternoon traffic was a nightmare, and it was all I could do to get into the parking lot of my destination. But I managed to get things done quicker than I expected, and with energy to spare, I decided to reward myself by crossing another movie off my holiday wish list.
The choice seemed obvious: with the Christmas rush of releases only a few days away, I needed to cross off the last lingering November releases. That meant finally braving the theaters to see one I had put off for nearly a month: the big-budget epic romance Australia, which had had a good run, but which would surely not survive in multiplexes after this week.
My putting it off was not because I objected to the movie itself, only its running time. At two hours and forty-eight minutes, it would tax my woeful attention span, unless I was in the right mood. But today I was in the right mood. No excuses.
The AMC multiplex was actually a half mile south, on the Massachusetts side of the line in the town of Tyngsboro (map). Waiting through multiple rounds at each stop light, I fought my way back into the Bay State until, after twenty minutes of frustration, I slipped into the ample parking lot and came to a rest. At this point, spending three hours in a darkened auditorium seemed like a very appealing option. A few minutes later, the snarling chaos on Middlesex Road seemed like a faraway nightmare.
Twenty minutes into the movie I was completely ashamed of myself. I was loving every minute of it.
This is definitely one of the most classical stories of the entire year---not surprisingly it was written, directed, and produced outside of the United States. There are two major storylines: the first hour and half is largely in the format of a classic cattle drive Hollywood western such as Red River (1948). The last hour is largely a wartime drama. There are several unifying themes that cover both parts, including the romance between Lady Ashley (Nicole Kidman) and her drover (Hugh Jackman). Brian Brown plays a very suitable villain. It all went by very quickly.
Unlike many period pieces of late, the 1940s actually felt like, well, the 1940s. One of the principal reasons was that not only did Jackman turn in a sturdy Clark Gable-type performance worthy of the outback, but Kidman declined to play the heroine as a contemporary supercharged version of Katherine Hepburn (i.e., the way women "should have been" back then, dammit) but with a soft vulnerability in the vernacular of leading ladies from that era. There was plenty of Hepburn in Kidman, to be sure, but of all the actresses of that era, she reminded most of Rita Hayworth, who had her own brand of sturdy brashness mixed with at-times-fragile beauty.
If the movie felt classical, it was for a reason: to tell a story based on theme that was out-of-bounds in the 1940s, namely the theft of aboriginal children from their families by the Australian government, and by extension, the issue of race in Australian society.
In that respect, the movie has a nice, healthy postmodern consciousness of its own purpose. Storytelling is explictly presented as a core feature of aboriginal culture, and the aboriginal child must be with his own people so as to "live his story." That story is, of course, the very movie we are watching. That the movie is explicitly aware of its own power and duty to do this is beautifully spelled out in another layer, namely the repeated references to, and the explicit watching of, The Wizard of Oz (1939), which furthermore exploits the homophonic use of "Oz" to mean Australia itself.
That the movie can pull all of this off without being too clever is a testimony not only to the strength of the underlying classical paradigm itself, but the masterful art of writer and director Baz Luhrmann.
If you enjoyed Luhrmann's previous work in Moulin Rouge (2001) and Strictly Ballroomn (1992), you won't be at all disappointed by this movie. I think it's his best work yet. If you didn't, you still might like it. But if big-scale romantic epics set in the 1940s with touches of sentimentality and nostalgia aren't your thing, then none of this will matter.
The movie is probably not artistically daring enough to reap major award nominations, but if it does, I won't be objecting.
The mid-afternoon traffic was a nightmare, and it was all I could do to get into the parking lot of my destination. But I managed to get things done quicker than I expected, and with energy to spare, I decided to reward myself by crossing another movie off my holiday wish list.
The choice seemed obvious: with the Christmas rush of releases only a few days away, I needed to cross off the last lingering November releases. That meant finally braving the theaters to see one I had put off for nearly a month: the big-budget epic romance Australia, which had had a good run, but which would surely not survive in multiplexes after this week.
My putting it off was not because I objected to the movie itself, only its running time. At two hours and forty-eight minutes, it would tax my woeful attention span, unless I was in the right mood. But today I was in the right mood. No excuses.
The AMC multiplex was actually a half mile south, on the Massachusetts side of the line in the town of Tyngsboro (map). Waiting through multiple rounds at each stop light, I fought my way back into the Bay State until, after twenty minutes of frustration, I slipped into the ample parking lot and came to a rest. At this point, spending three hours in a darkened auditorium seemed like a very appealing option. A few minutes later, the snarling chaos on Middlesex Road seemed like a faraway nightmare.
Twenty minutes into the movie I was completely ashamed of myself. I was loving every minute of it.
This is definitely one of the most classical stories of the entire year---not surprisingly it was written, directed, and produced outside of the United States. There are two major storylines: the first hour and half is largely in the format of a classic cattle drive Hollywood western such as Red River (1948). The last hour is largely a wartime drama. There are several unifying themes that cover both parts, including the romance between Lady Ashley (Nicole Kidman) and her drover (Hugh Jackman). Brian Brown plays a very suitable villain. It all went by very quickly.
Unlike many period pieces of late, the 1940s actually felt like, well, the 1940s. One of the principal reasons was that not only did Jackman turn in a sturdy Clark Gable-type performance worthy of the outback, but Kidman declined to play the heroine as a contemporary supercharged version of Katherine Hepburn (i.e., the way women "should have been" back then, dammit) but with a soft vulnerability in the vernacular of leading ladies from that era. There was plenty of Hepburn in Kidman, to be sure, but of all the actresses of that era, she reminded most of Rita Hayworth, who had her own brand of sturdy brashness mixed with at-times-fragile beauty.
If the movie felt classical, it was for a reason: to tell a story based on theme that was out-of-bounds in the 1940s, namely the theft of aboriginal children from their families by the Australian government, and by extension, the issue of race in Australian society.
In that respect, the movie has a nice, healthy postmodern consciousness of its own purpose. Storytelling is explictly presented as a core feature of aboriginal culture, and the aboriginal child must be with his own people so as to "live his story." That story is, of course, the very movie we are watching. That the movie is explicitly aware of its own power and duty to do this is beautifully spelled out in another layer, namely the repeated references to, and the explicit watching of, The Wizard of Oz (1939), which furthermore exploits the homophonic use of "Oz" to mean Australia itself.
That the movie can pull all of this off without being too clever is a testimony not only to the strength of the underlying classical paradigm itself, but the masterful art of writer and director Baz Luhrmann.
If you enjoyed Luhrmann's previous work in Moulin Rouge (2001) and Strictly Ballroomn (1992), you won't be at all disappointed by this movie. I think it's his best work yet. If you didn't, you still might like it. But if big-scale romantic epics set in the 1940s with touches of sentimentality and nostalgia aren't your thing, then none of this will matter.
The movie is probably not artistically daring enough to reap major award nominations, but if it does, I won't be objecting.
Cadillac Records
Two years my friend Agnes and I went to see Dreamgirls at the spectacular Metrolux multiplex at the Centerra lifestyle center outside Loveland. It was around New Year's time, and when we walked out, we both blurted out that we hated it, and for nearly the same reason: the movie was supposedly a fictionalized representation of Motown in the 1960s, but from our point-of-view, it had gotten everything about that era so horribly, horribly wrong.
At that time I was hardly seeing any movies, and it clued me into a trend that had been long in the making, which I can only describe as "denial of history" by contemporary cinema. This is the fallacy that "people have always talked, acted, and related to each other as they do now." If this posture is adopted by explicit design, that is forgivable and possibly interesting, but when it arises out ignorance and laziness, as I suspect it often does, it makes it hard for me to enjoy the movie.
Dreamgirls seemed particularly heinous because it tried to compress too much (phony) history into one set of characters, in the over-stylized way of Forest Gump. Agnes and I both wandered: "Why not make a historical picture about the real history of Motown, instead of all this phony crap?"
Well, one has come along, attempting to tell at least a little bit of the story of that time. Right away that means the movie gets a "plus one" in my book.
I would not have known about Cadillac Records if it weren't for the single trailer I saw before Soul Men last month in Cambridge. It crawled into limited release two weeks ago, and I was sure I was going to have to drive sixty miles or more to see it. But by some miracle, it showed up in Leominster last week week, out in the far-flung suburbs, as if made to order just for me, especially with all the roads clogged with snow.
Actually I didn't go to Leominster, but its nearby sister city of Fitchburg, where the movie was also showing. It took me nearly a half hour of crawling at an ant's pace through the apocalyptically clogged back streets to find the place where it was showing. But it was the kind of place I loved most: a strip-mall multiplex, wedged in between other businesses. I just have a fondness for these faded places. As in Leominster, the matinees are dirt cheap.
The movie is a quiet little affair, telling the simplified story of Chess Records, an early R&B label, founded and run on the South Side of Chicago by Polish-American Len Chess (played by Andrian Brody), and telling the story of the various musicians who rose to fame via Chess, focusing in particular on Muddy Waters, played brilliantly by Jeffrey Wright. As the story progresses, we meet Little Walter (Columbus Short), Howlin' Wolf (Eamonn Walker), Chuck Berry (Mos Def), and Etta James (Beyoncé Knowles). I mention the actors' names here because all of them seemed convincing to me in their roles, giving very earnest performances that were not over-the-top postmodern reinterpretions of how the characters should have been, if they had lived today.
That in fact was the danger I suspected with this movie. Would they attempt to tell the story of 1950's musicians in the idiom of present-day hip-hop? Would this come across with a glib Made-for-MTV sort of lightness? Some of that touch was inevitable, given its limited budget and the fact that it was written and directed by Darnell Martin, whose previous work is almost all in television. But whenever it started creaking into that kind of territory, the story shifted into a new phase and I found myself interested anew in the characters.
This is essentially a classic "rags-to-stardom" story, about both the record label and the individual artists. Inevitably the real biographies and history must be mutated into the poetics of Hollywood cinema. Thus in watching Act One ("rise to success"), I sat in the audience waiting for the shoe to drop. At the start of Act Two, what challenges would arise that would threaten the initial success? Would they be in the form of cheap cop-outs (sabotage, bad luck, misapprehension, etc.)? Would they be under the vague label of "can't handle success"? Would I be able to see them coming miles away while I fidgeted in my seat waiting for the story to get around to showing the obvious? Or would the story introduce them in a way that was fresh and interesting, while still creating sufficient narrative tension? To a large extent, I judge this type of movie by how it handles these questions.
To my pleasant surprise, the movie avoided worn-out clichés by telling a succession of overlapping stories of each of the individual musicians as they show up. The Len Chess story becomes a Muddy Waters story becomes a Little Walter story becomes an Etta James story, and so on. It all happens under the umbrella of the story of the label itself, which has its own gentle trajectory. The introduction of new artist made the story seem fresh again, which is the way music feels. Just when I felt things bogging down at the mid-point, in walks Chuck Berry, who brings a whole new dimension to everything that has happened up to that point. I thought to myself as I watched Mos Def in character, doing a duck walk across the stage: this is how rock and roll must have felt like. Not bad for a quiet little movie that snuck into theaters.
At that time I was hardly seeing any movies, and it clued me into a trend that had been long in the making, which I can only describe as "denial of history" by contemporary cinema. This is the fallacy that "people have always talked, acted, and related to each other as they do now." If this posture is adopted by explicit design, that is forgivable and possibly interesting, but when it arises out ignorance and laziness, as I suspect it often does, it makes it hard for me to enjoy the movie.
Dreamgirls seemed particularly heinous because it tried to compress too much (phony) history into one set of characters, in the over-stylized way of Forest Gump. Agnes and I both wandered: "Why not make a historical picture about the real history of Motown, instead of all this phony crap?"
Well, one has come along, attempting to tell at least a little bit of the story of that time. Right away that means the movie gets a "plus one" in my book.
I would not have known about Cadillac Records if it weren't for the single trailer I saw before Soul Men last month in Cambridge. It crawled into limited release two weeks ago, and I was sure I was going to have to drive sixty miles or more to see it. But by some miracle, it showed up in Leominster last week week, out in the far-flung suburbs, as if made to order just for me, especially with all the roads clogged with snow.
Actually I didn't go to Leominster, but its nearby sister city of Fitchburg, where the movie was also showing. It took me nearly a half hour of crawling at an ant's pace through the apocalyptically clogged back streets to find the place where it was showing. But it was the kind of place I loved most: a strip-mall multiplex, wedged in between other businesses. I just have a fondness for these faded places. As in Leominster, the matinees are dirt cheap.
The movie is a quiet little affair, telling the simplified story of Chess Records, an early R&B label, founded and run on the South Side of Chicago by Polish-American Len Chess (played by Andrian Brody), and telling the story of the various musicians who rose to fame via Chess, focusing in particular on Muddy Waters, played brilliantly by Jeffrey Wright. As the story progresses, we meet Little Walter (Columbus Short), Howlin' Wolf (Eamonn Walker), Chuck Berry (Mos Def), and Etta James (Beyoncé Knowles). I mention the actors' names here because all of them seemed convincing to me in their roles, giving very earnest performances that were not over-the-top postmodern reinterpretions of how the characters should have been, if they had lived today.
That in fact was the danger I suspected with this movie. Would they attempt to tell the story of 1950's musicians in the idiom of present-day hip-hop? Would this come across with a glib Made-for-MTV sort of lightness? Some of that touch was inevitable, given its limited budget and the fact that it was written and directed by Darnell Martin, whose previous work is almost all in television. But whenever it started creaking into that kind of territory, the story shifted into a new phase and I found myself interested anew in the characters.
This is essentially a classic "rags-to-stardom" story, about both the record label and the individual artists. Inevitably the real biographies and history must be mutated into the poetics of Hollywood cinema. Thus in watching Act One ("rise to success"), I sat in the audience waiting for the shoe to drop. At the start of Act Two, what challenges would arise that would threaten the initial success? Would they be in the form of cheap cop-outs (sabotage, bad luck, misapprehension, etc.)? Would they be under the vague label of "can't handle success"? Would I be able to see them coming miles away while I fidgeted in my seat waiting for the story to get around to showing the obvious? Or would the story introduce them in a way that was fresh and interesting, while still creating sufficient narrative tension? To a large extent, I judge this type of movie by how it handles these questions.
To my pleasant surprise, the movie avoided worn-out clichés by telling a succession of overlapping stories of each of the individual musicians as they show up. The Len Chess story becomes a Muddy Waters story becomes a Little Walter story becomes an Etta James story, and so on. It all happens under the umbrella of the story of the label itself, which has its own gentle trajectory. The introduction of new artist made the story seem fresh again, which is the way music feels. Just when I felt things bogging down at the mid-point, in walks Chuck Berry, who brings a whole new dimension to everything that has happened up to that point. I thought to myself as I watched Mos Def in character, doing a duck walk across the stage: this is how rock and roll must have felt like. Not bad for a quiet little movie that snuck into theaters.
Holiday Movie Extravaganza
After a quiet Christmas break, I went on a rampage, seeing three movies a day in the last two days. It's going to be fun, writing about them, but first I need to clear the slate with a discussion of a couple nice films I saw earlier this week.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Five Quiet Little Movies From Earlier This Year That I Quite Liked
In the Christmas spirit, I present five "little" movies from 2008 that I liked but which were somewhat overlooked or underappreciated, listed in chronological order of release:
1. Charlie Barlett (Feb. 22). Very fun teen comedy that comes across as the 2008 version of Ferris Bueller's Day Off. This movie put Kat Dennings on the map for me as an up-and-coming young actress. This was definitely a break-out year for her.
2. Stop-Loss (March 6). My number one underappreciated Hollywood movie of the year. I really loved this simple story about a Texas soldier on the lam from being sent back to Iraq. Hollywood needs to make a lot more movies like this. I very much liked Ryan Phillippe in the lead, and especially Abbie Cornish in her supporting role. But I've been told she has no shot at award nominations, because she stole Mr. Phillippe away from the much-beloved Reese Witherspoon.
3. The Bank Job (March 7). A period spy thriller masquerading as a caper movie. The DVD extras really made me appreciate the costumes from 1970 London. It heightened my appreciation of Jason Statham (my actor-of-the-year) and put the lovable Saffron Burrows on the map for me.
4. Flawless (March 28). Demi Moore (!!) is a woman facing the glass ceiling in the London diamond industry in the early 1960s. A fun caper plot with some pleasant twists involving the ever-watchable Michael Caine. Splendid period art direction, and one of the best uses of Dave Brubek's Take Five in a movie score.
5. Bottle Shock (Sept. 19). Fun, quaint little indy movie based on the real-life incident from 1976 in which California wines won a blind taste test in France. Alan Rickman is fun in a role not as a villain. Unlike many period movies about the 1970s, this one actually felt like the 1970s.
1. Charlie Barlett (Feb. 22). Very fun teen comedy that comes across as the 2008 version of Ferris Bueller's Day Off. This movie put Kat Dennings on the map for me as an up-and-coming young actress. This was definitely a break-out year for her.
2. Stop-Loss (March 6). My number one underappreciated Hollywood movie of the year. I really loved this simple story about a Texas soldier on the lam from being sent back to Iraq. Hollywood needs to make a lot more movies like this. I very much liked Ryan Phillippe in the lead, and especially Abbie Cornish in her supporting role. But I've been told she has no shot at award nominations, because she stole Mr. Phillippe away from the much-beloved Reese Witherspoon.
3. The Bank Job (March 7). A period spy thriller masquerading as a caper movie. The DVD extras really made me appreciate the costumes from 1970 London. It heightened my appreciation of Jason Statham (my actor-of-the-year) and put the lovable Saffron Burrows on the map for me.
4. Flawless (March 28). Demi Moore (!!) is a woman facing the glass ceiling in the London diamond industry in the early 1960s. A fun caper plot with some pleasant twists involving the ever-watchable Michael Caine. Splendid period art direction, and one of the best uses of Dave Brubek's Take Five in a movie score.
5. Bottle Shock (Sept. 19). Fun, quaint little indy movie based on the real-life incident from 1976 in which California wines won a blind taste test in France. Alan Rickman is fun in a role not as a villain. Unlike many period movies about the 1970s, this one actually felt like the 1970s.
Monday, December 22, 2008
The Tale of Despereaux
Once upon a time there was a tiny little mouse who, unlike the other mice around him, lived by a code of honor, believed in justice, and always spoke the truth.
Well, he would have been all that, except in the advanced state of postmodern decay of our culture, the words "honor," "justice," and "truth" have lost all their former meaning. The mouse never got to embody any of those things because the people who made The Tale of Despereaux had no idea what those words meant.
Supposedly the mouse is exceptional partly because he "tells the truth." In classical narrative, this kind of character must be put to the test. Truth-telling is important when it becomes painful to do so. But nowhere is the mouse put to any kind of test of his honor in that way. There is absolutely nothing in this movie about keeping one's word. This is absolutely the most central concept in classical honor, and without it, the entire story is just so much bullshit.
Actually for the first hour, I was really hooked. It seemed exactly my kind of movie. If I sound bitter, it is because I feel swindled. The point at which I felt betrayed occurred when one of the previously "honorable" characters suddenly decides to do something very dishonorable. It was so confusing that at first I thought it was all a ruse. But it was not. Thus the movie is not at all about honor, but about dishonor. It is a lucid dissertation in the postmodern concept that no truly honorable people exist, but that everyone is prone to commit arbitrarily dishonorable acts at a moment's notice in order to gain personal advantage.
By the end of the film, the narrative falls completely apart. The climax seems to come in mixed-up order, as if it were written by multiple screenwriters all trying to get in their moment of glory.
The only part of the movie I enjoyed (other than the splendid 3-D animation) was the classification of people into two categories: mice (who are timid, and who cower in fear) and rats (who are cruel degraded spirits who live in the gutter, and who lie and betray). This duality is one of the essential theses of advanced postmodernism, and I was pleased to see it spelled out so cleanly. It was the most literal depiction of the concept I call "The Postmodern Sewer."
I also liked how the story depicted honor as such a rare commodity that the mouse hero character has to learn about it from reading a book. Moreover, books are seen by the cowering mice as something to eat. They don't understand why he would read it, an act for which he is banished to the dungeon. Now that's truth-telling.
But this didn't make up for the fact that appropriating classical themes and shitting all over them is also very postmodern, and this movie was one of the clearest examples of that I have seen in many moons.
In the classical paradigm, the code of honor of a gentleman is defined not so much by what a man will do, but by what he is unwilling to do (i.e. how he will limit his power). In the postmodern, however, the idea of "honor" is stripped down to mean "acting in an overtly chivalrous manner." This becomes interpreted as "being recklessly brave in the face of any danger." This is something the degraded contemporary mind understands, since we still need to brainwash the masses to be cannon fodder for our fascist wars of conquest. Honor is thus reduced to the single command: chaaaaaaarge!
Along those lines, the most telling scene of this movie involves a magical character. The fact that there is even a magical character at all in this movie is more than a little puzzling, since the rest of the whimsical world of the movie is entirely naturalistic, despite the fact that the animals (or at least some of them) can talk to humans. But in contemporary "faith based" cinema, we have been trained to accept the arbitrary inclusion of magic whenever the movie makers want to toss it in. In this case, the gratuitously magical character is a man made out of animated vegetables. He springs to life in the private kitchen of the king's chef, whenever the chef needs cooking advice. At first I thought it worked, because it could be played as a figment of the chef's imagination.
But in the critical scene I'm talking about, the magical vegetable man (who of course speaks with a French accent), is convinced by the aforementioned mouse to save a princess held in a dungeon. Monsieur Vegetable runs out of the kitchen into the dungeon yelling "honor! honor!" with an over-aspirated French 'h' at the beginning of the word. But when he gets to the dungeon, he stumbles and collapses into a big salad-like heap. We never hear from him again. That pretty much sums up the entire movie to me: a pile of rotting garbage masquerading as something meaningful.
I would label this movie as my Disappointment of the Year, but Miracle at St. Anna is just too wretched to have any rivals for that prize.
One more note: what the hell is it with rodents in kitchens falling into soup? Was last year's abysmal Ratatouille from Disney not enough? I guess Universal thought it was such a cute concept that they had to duplicate it? Barf!
Well, he would have been all that, except in the advanced state of postmodern decay of our culture, the words "honor," "justice," and "truth" have lost all their former meaning. The mouse never got to embody any of those things because the people who made The Tale of Despereaux had no idea what those words meant.
Supposedly the mouse is exceptional partly because he "tells the truth." In classical narrative, this kind of character must be put to the test. Truth-telling is important when it becomes painful to do so. But nowhere is the mouse put to any kind of test of his honor in that way. There is absolutely nothing in this movie about keeping one's word. This is absolutely the most central concept in classical honor, and without it, the entire story is just so much bullshit.
Actually for the first hour, I was really hooked. It seemed exactly my kind of movie. If I sound bitter, it is because I feel swindled. The point at which I felt betrayed occurred when one of the previously "honorable" characters suddenly decides to do something very dishonorable. It was so confusing that at first I thought it was all a ruse. But it was not. Thus the movie is not at all about honor, but about dishonor. It is a lucid dissertation in the postmodern concept that no truly honorable people exist, but that everyone is prone to commit arbitrarily dishonorable acts at a moment's notice in order to gain personal advantage.
By the end of the film, the narrative falls completely apart. The climax seems to come in mixed-up order, as if it were written by multiple screenwriters all trying to get in their moment of glory.
The only part of the movie I enjoyed (other than the splendid 3-D animation) was the classification of people into two categories: mice (who are timid, and who cower in fear) and rats (who are cruel degraded spirits who live in the gutter, and who lie and betray). This duality is one of the essential theses of advanced postmodernism, and I was pleased to see it spelled out so cleanly. It was the most literal depiction of the concept I call "The Postmodern Sewer."
I also liked how the story depicted honor as such a rare commodity that the mouse hero character has to learn about it from reading a book. Moreover, books are seen by the cowering mice as something to eat. They don't understand why he would read it, an act for which he is banished to the dungeon. Now that's truth-telling.
But this didn't make up for the fact that appropriating classical themes and shitting all over them is also very postmodern, and this movie was one of the clearest examples of that I have seen in many moons.
In the classical paradigm, the code of honor of a gentleman is defined not so much by what a man will do, but by what he is unwilling to do (i.e. how he will limit his power). In the postmodern, however, the idea of "honor" is stripped down to mean "acting in an overtly chivalrous manner." This becomes interpreted as "being recklessly brave in the face of any danger." This is something the degraded contemporary mind understands, since we still need to brainwash the masses to be cannon fodder for our fascist wars of conquest. Honor is thus reduced to the single command: chaaaaaaarge!
Along those lines, the most telling scene of this movie involves a magical character. The fact that there is even a magical character at all in this movie is more than a little puzzling, since the rest of the whimsical world of the movie is entirely naturalistic, despite the fact that the animals (or at least some of them) can talk to humans. But in contemporary "faith based" cinema, we have been trained to accept the arbitrary inclusion of magic whenever the movie makers want to toss it in. In this case, the gratuitously magical character is a man made out of animated vegetables. He springs to life in the private kitchen of the king's chef, whenever the chef needs cooking advice. At first I thought it worked, because it could be played as a figment of the chef's imagination.
But in the critical scene I'm talking about, the magical vegetable man (who of course speaks with a French accent), is convinced by the aforementioned mouse to save a princess held in a dungeon. Monsieur Vegetable runs out of the kitchen into the dungeon yelling "honor! honor!" with an over-aspirated French 'h' at the beginning of the word. But when he gets to the dungeon, he stumbles and collapses into a big salad-like heap. We never hear from him again. That pretty much sums up the entire movie to me: a pile of rotting garbage masquerading as something meaningful.
I would label this movie as my Disappointment of the Year, but Miracle at St. Anna is just too wretched to have any rivals for that prize.
One more note: what the hell is it with rodents in kitchens falling into soup? Was last year's abysmal Ratatouille from Disney not enough? I guess Universal thought it was such a cute concept that they had to duplicate it? Barf!
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Nothing Like the Holildays
My extended stay here in Massachusetts with my sister's family has been an absolute delight. What started as a Thanksgiving visit turned into an invitation to stay through Christmas. Every moment has been a joy.
Still, I do enjoy escaping the farmstead at regular intervals, if for no other reason than to give them all a little break from my presence. This is particularly true now that winter has socked us in and the Christmas season has frayed my sisters' nerves a bit.
The cleanup from the big snowstorm went fairly smoothly, and by Saturday morning the roads were cleared up. This seemed like my cue to get out into the world for the afternoon. The upcoming Christmas avalanche of new releases was staring me in the face. I was determined to knock at least two movies off my to-see list, to make a dent in what remained. So I revved up the car and headed to the well-heated Showcase multiplex in Lowell, where I had been just before the storm set in.
Nothing Like the Holidays, a family comedy, seemed like an obvious choice to get under my belt before Thursday. I had a pretty good idea of it from the trailer. A Puerto Rican family in Chicago gathers for Christmas, with the grown sons and daughters returning home for the occasion. All hell breaks loose when the mother announces over dinner that she is going to divorce her husband.
I was a little suspicious of the title, which could have several meanings, one of which could be the completion of the phrase "This holiday movie is ironically..." But it seemed like lightweight fun fare, and came in under ninety minutes, so I figured it was harmless at worst.
The story is a hodge-podge of many separate subplots involving the separate characters, overlain against the main narrative. The usual way to handle this type of comedy is to place the characters in various scene combinations with each other, mixing and matching them to drive the various story lines. Often they will talk about characters who are not in the scene. From time to time, you gather all the characters into one scene together. There also must be at least one outsider among the group,to give perspective. In this case, the outsider is a Jewish daughter-in-law played by Debra Messing, who turns out to be the hinge of the story.
The movie started to win me over from the first shot, which has the father attempting to hang a banner over the porch of his house. The wife, who has not yet announced she is leaving him, is standing at the foot of the sidewalk looking up at him, and disapproving him with a frown. The banner is a "Welcome Home" sign for their youngest son, who is returning from a tour of duty in Iraq. When we meet him, we find that he has been injured, and has a secret trauma that torments him.
The opening shot thus frames the two "crossing" stories upon which the rest of the minor stories hang: the conflict between husband and wife (on the axis perpendicular to the street), and the war trauma of the returning son (on the axis parallel to the street). That's what I call good directing!
The crossed axes of these conflicts are symbolized in a gnarly tree in the front yard, which the family is determined to cut down. The symbolism is made explicit by a line from one of the characters, who suggests that the tree is so old, its wood was used for Jesus' cross. Of course we know what the fate of the tree will be.
So we essentially have a looming subtext about the effects of war, which touches everything else in the story. Eventually we will also learn what is really bugging the mother: none of her adult children have produced offspring. Thus we have death (the war) coupled with the stoppage of the life flow (no grandchildren). The resolution of all the conflicts in the narrative inevitably depends not only on the healing of the war trauma, but on the pregnancy of one of the females to produce new life. Since it's a comedy we know both things will eventually happen, and they do.
There is no original concept at work here, but that's not the point for this type of movie. Rather the collection of vignettes allows a narrative that is topical for our time. The challenges facing the various children speak of 2008 in a highly specific way. That the story is about Puerto Ricans in Chicago is somewhat of a misdirection. In 2008, the best way to speak about all of America is to choose a specific ethnicity and dig deep into it.
By the end of the movie, however, I began to notice something really weird about it, having to do with the depiction of religion. The family's Catholicism is treated with a comic heavy-handedness that is absent in the rest of the movie, which tends towards sympathy all around. The parish priest, called in by the children to save the parents' marriage, is depicted as a clueless oaf. When he rises to offer a prayer at the dinner table, he is literally shouted back into his seat. On Christmas Eve, the father decides he will go to midnight mass for the first time in years. In a classical narrative, we would see his attendance with the wife, and this would become a spiritual turning point of the movie. Not so here. Not only do we not see them at church, but in the aftermath, absolutely nothing has changed. God is truly dead, it seems.
But the best was yet to come. On Christmas Day, the family takes part in a Puerto Rican tradition by which people come out of their houses to make an ever-growing parade singing Christmas carols as they walk down the street. At first, they are singing "The First Noel." So far, so good. But I noticed that the soundtrack sort of faded out when they got to the line "Born is the King of Israel." I wondered at the time if it was too politically incorrect to say the phrase "the King of Israel."
Then it got really weird. The crowd grows and grows and spills out into the park. Everyone is singing. But what are they singing? They are singing "O come all ye faithful." But they are not really singing it. They are seemingly chanting the first line over and over in braindead fashion, as if nobody knows the words. WTF? What's wrong with "Oh come ye, oh come ye to Bethlehem"? Why were the lyrics being sabotaged in what was supposed to be Christmas movie?
Finally at the end of the movie, when all is well again, Debra Messing's character is unwrapping a gift from her husband, played by John Leguizamo. The gift turns out to be a christening gown for the infant they are now determined to have, despite the fact that the daughter-in-law is still determined to pursue her dream job offer of running a hedge fund. Hedge fund!? HA HA HA! Now that's so 2008!
Opening up the package, she protests that they haven't yet decided in what faith they will raise their intended child. The husbands says, "Who's ever heard of a Puerto Rican Jew?" (Hasn't everyone?)
She asserts that Puerto Rican Jews are quite common, and the rest of the family, including the mother, chime in to agree heartily, giving several examples. It is almost as if they all want the child to be raised Jewish.
Cumulatively the movie felt like an unequivocal attack on the family's Christianity, and like two other movies I've seen this year (Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist and Religulous), it came across as a not-so-subtle advertisement for Judaism.
It all left me scratching my head in puzzlement. What was this movie trying to say? As I drove home, I realized that my hunch about the irony of the title was probably right on the mark.
Still, I do enjoy escaping the farmstead at regular intervals, if for no other reason than to give them all a little break from my presence. This is particularly true now that winter has socked us in and the Christmas season has frayed my sisters' nerves a bit.
The cleanup from the big snowstorm went fairly smoothly, and by Saturday morning the roads were cleared up. This seemed like my cue to get out into the world for the afternoon. The upcoming Christmas avalanche of new releases was staring me in the face. I was determined to knock at least two movies off my to-see list, to make a dent in what remained. So I revved up the car and headed to the well-heated Showcase multiplex in Lowell, where I had been just before the storm set in.
Nothing Like the Holidays, a family comedy, seemed like an obvious choice to get under my belt before Thursday. I had a pretty good idea of it from the trailer. A Puerto Rican family in Chicago gathers for Christmas, with the grown sons and daughters returning home for the occasion. All hell breaks loose when the mother announces over dinner that she is going to divorce her husband.
I was a little suspicious of the title, which could have several meanings, one of which could be the completion of the phrase "This holiday movie is ironically..." But it seemed like lightweight fun fare, and came in under ninety minutes, so I figured it was harmless at worst.
The story is a hodge-podge of many separate subplots involving the separate characters, overlain against the main narrative. The usual way to handle this type of comedy is to place the characters in various scene combinations with each other, mixing and matching them to drive the various story lines. Often they will talk about characters who are not in the scene. From time to time, you gather all the characters into one scene together. There also must be at least one outsider among the group,to give perspective. In this case, the outsider is a Jewish daughter-in-law played by Debra Messing, who turns out to be the hinge of the story.
The movie started to win me over from the first shot, which has the father attempting to hang a banner over the porch of his house. The wife, who has not yet announced she is leaving him, is standing at the foot of the sidewalk looking up at him, and disapproving him with a frown. The banner is a "Welcome Home" sign for their youngest son, who is returning from a tour of duty in Iraq. When we meet him, we find that he has been injured, and has a secret trauma that torments him.
The opening shot thus frames the two "crossing" stories upon which the rest of the minor stories hang: the conflict between husband and wife (on the axis perpendicular to the street), and the war trauma of the returning son (on the axis parallel to the street). That's what I call good directing!
The crossed axes of these conflicts are symbolized in a gnarly tree in the front yard, which the family is determined to cut down. The symbolism is made explicit by a line from one of the characters, who suggests that the tree is so old, its wood was used for Jesus' cross. Of course we know what the fate of the tree will be.
So we essentially have a looming subtext about the effects of war, which touches everything else in the story. Eventually we will also learn what is really bugging the mother: none of her adult children have produced offspring. Thus we have death (the war) coupled with the stoppage of the life flow (no grandchildren). The resolution of all the conflicts in the narrative inevitably depends not only on the healing of the war trauma, but on the pregnancy of one of the females to produce new life. Since it's a comedy we know both things will eventually happen, and they do.
There is no original concept at work here, but that's not the point for this type of movie. Rather the collection of vignettes allows a narrative that is topical for our time. The challenges facing the various children speak of 2008 in a highly specific way. That the story is about Puerto Ricans in Chicago is somewhat of a misdirection. In 2008, the best way to speak about all of America is to choose a specific ethnicity and dig deep into it.
By the end of the movie, however, I began to notice something really weird about it, having to do with the depiction of religion. The family's Catholicism is treated with a comic heavy-handedness that is absent in the rest of the movie, which tends towards sympathy all around. The parish priest, called in by the children to save the parents' marriage, is depicted as a clueless oaf. When he rises to offer a prayer at the dinner table, he is literally shouted back into his seat. On Christmas Eve, the father decides he will go to midnight mass for the first time in years. In a classical narrative, we would see his attendance with the wife, and this would become a spiritual turning point of the movie. Not so here. Not only do we not see them at church, but in the aftermath, absolutely nothing has changed. God is truly dead, it seems.
But the best was yet to come. On Christmas Day, the family takes part in a Puerto Rican tradition by which people come out of their houses to make an ever-growing parade singing Christmas carols as they walk down the street. At first, they are singing "The First Noel." So far, so good. But I noticed that the soundtrack sort of faded out when they got to the line "Born is the King of Israel." I wondered at the time if it was too politically incorrect to say the phrase "the King of Israel."
Then it got really weird. The crowd grows and grows and spills out into the park. Everyone is singing. But what are they singing? They are singing "O come all ye faithful." But they are not really singing it. They are seemingly chanting the first line over and over in braindead fashion, as if nobody knows the words. WTF? What's wrong with "Oh come ye, oh come ye to Bethlehem"? Why were the lyrics being sabotaged in what was supposed to be Christmas movie?
Finally at the end of the movie, when all is well again, Debra Messing's character is unwrapping a gift from her husband, played by John Leguizamo. The gift turns out to be a christening gown for the infant they are now determined to have, despite the fact that the daughter-in-law is still determined to pursue her dream job offer of running a hedge fund. Hedge fund!? HA HA HA! Now that's so 2008!
Opening up the package, she protests that they haven't yet decided in what faith they will raise their intended child. The husbands says, "Who's ever heard of a Puerto Rican Jew?" (Hasn't everyone?)
She asserts that Puerto Rican Jews are quite common, and the rest of the family, including the mother, chime in to agree heartily, giving several examples. It is almost as if they all want the child to be raised Jewish.
Cumulatively the movie felt like an unequivocal attack on the family's Christianity, and like two other movies I've seen this year (Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist and Religulous), it came across as a not-so-subtle advertisement for Judaism.
It all left me scratching my head in puzzlement. What was this movie trying to say? As I drove home, I realized that my hunch about the irony of the title was probably right on the mark.
Year-end lists: Bah, Humbug
The Internets are suddenly full of every blogger's year-end list of best and worst movies of 2008. Don't expect any such list from me any time soon, except maybe a tentative one in a couple weeks (maybe by Golden Globes time). Given that I've vowed to see all the releases from this year in some form or another, it would be highly disingenuous to pass judgment when there are still so many I haven't seen, either because I missed them during the first five months of the year, or they haven't been released yet.
Speaking of that last thing, I've noticed that half the movies on many people's "best" lists are ones that haven't made it to theaters near me. I feel so left out! What an injustice, after all the furious work I've put it, seeing so many movies. I thought for sure that this year I would seen them all. Alas, not so.
I'm convinced that most of these lists are highly deficient, especially the "worst" ones, because of the titles missing from them. Anyone making such (tentative) lists should declare which movies they haven't seen yet. I certainly will be doing that when I get around to it.
Speaking of that last thing, I've noticed that half the movies on many people's "best" lists are ones that haven't made it to theaters near me. I feel so left out! What an injustice, after all the furious work I've put it, seeing so many movies. I thought for sure that this year I would seen them all. Alas, not so.
I'm convinced that most of these lists are highly deficient, especially the "worst" ones, because of the titles missing from them. Anyone making such (tentative) lists should declare which movies they haven't seen yet. I certainly will be doing that when I get around to it.
Gold Diggers on a Rampage
Frank Rich becomes the second New York Times writer in a week to cite one of my all-time favorite Thirties movies in reference to contemporary economic conditions.
2008: Only the Beginning?
Going over my well-worn list of 2008 movie releases yesterday, it occurred to me that I was going to wind up seeing many of the same movies on DVD. You can learn so much about movies in general, and about the particular movie in question, from the extras on a DVD. I know I will wind up wanting that info on so many of the movies I've seen in theaters during the last year (112 and counting).
Talking with my sis in her kitchen a couple hours later, I joked that I should turn all of this into a case study of the movies of 2008, and use this blog as a dry-run to write a book about contemporary culture and art, including the classical-postmodern duality that fascinates me. The book would be based on all the movie releases from a single year.
She thought it was a great idea. Well, who knows? Given all that is happening, it would be a portrait of America on the verge of...whatever is about to happen.
Talking with my sis in her kitchen a couple hours later, I joked that I should turn all of this into a case study of the movies of 2008, and use this blog as a dry-run to write a book about contemporary culture and art, including the classical-postmodern duality that fascinates me. The book would be based on all the movie releases from a single year.
She thought it was a great idea. Well, who knows? Given all that is happening, it would be a portrait of America on the verge of...whatever is about to happen.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Yes Man
The weather forecast for Friday was ominous: a huge snowstorm was closing in on New England. The local news web site said to expect 8-12 inches in this part of Massachusetts. Everyone began to make preparations for the onslaught. Salt trucks were on the move. To my sister's chagrin, school on Friday was pre-emptively canceled.
The snow wasn't supposed to start falling until late afternoon on Friday, and the night before I had decided to leave open the question of going to see a movie. By noon, it was still all clear, and after another short debate with myself, I decided in the affirmative, zipping over to Lowell to squeeze in a movie before the flakes started falling. Who knows what it would be like on my way back, but for now at least, the roads were unchanged.
I chose Lowell because unlike Leominster, it is one of those beautiful ultramodern multiplexes with a huge concession area with various foodstuffs and treats, as well as (more importantly) a well-lit coffee-shop style seating area in an ample heated lobby. That meant I could sit and read by sunlight until the movie started. Leominster is fine for a quick show, getting in and out, but I wanted to give myself plenty of time today, just in case. Besides I didn't want to get caught in an unheated auditorium like I did with Delgo.
What to see? There were many options. I debated in my head on the way to Lowell and settled on the new Jim Carrey movie, Yes Man, which had just been released that day. I had been joking with my sister that December was an incredible challenge for me, with releases starring Keanu Reeves, Jim Carrey, Tom Cruise, and (piece de resistance) Adam Sandler. "One down, three to go," I told her, after coming home from The Day the Earth Stood Still. Really I should throw in Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn too.
But Carrey can make an interesting flick now and then (like this one) and as I said, I like to give every movie its own fair showing before judging it.
My friend Thor would classify Yes Man as a movie based on "gag." In this case, as you know if you've seen any of the trailers, the gag is that Carrey's character---a lonely man shut off from life---makes a pact to say "yes" to every offer to him for an entire year. And away we go!
A cinematic story based on such a gag must inevitably have the following narrative: at first the gag works to the benefit of the protagonist. Then eventually it will lead him into some serious trouble which causes him to rethink the whole venture. The critical issues will become: how does he resolve these second-stage difficulties created by the gag, and how does he eventually terminate the gag while gaining some overall positive result?
Since this is a romantic comedy, it must follow that the gag will lead him to his true love. She must appear by the end of Act One, in the "beneficial" part of the gag. The challenges he faces in Act Two will be of the nature of threatening his new-found love. The resolution of the story issues mentioned above will also involve the resolution of the difficulties in his new relationship. From this, the screenplay pretty much writes itself.
One can also deduce that Act Three of the movie, which involves resolving the challenge to his new relationship, must deal with the "Swindled Woman Problem."
Briefly put, the Swindled Woman Problem, which crops up at regular intervals in Hollywood romantic comedies, is a plot point generated by any romantic-comedy centered on a gag involving the male lead. It arises in cases where the gag (a bet, a pact, a conspiracy of some sort) causes the male lead to meet his true love and begin pursuing her, initially with some kind of ulterior motive. He will eventually fall in love with her in a genuine sense, but when the gag is inevitably revealed to her, she will conclude (rightfully) that his desire was not in earnest. She will become angry and will exile him from her life. Hence, the Swindled Woman.
To make amends, the male lead must suffer a downfall and punishment (painful alienation from the love of the woman), and must then save the day by somehow convincing her of the genuineness of his desire and love for her.
Such stories can often be judged partly on the cleverness by which they resolve (terminate) the gag, and by which the hero convinces the woman that his desire is not counterfeit.
Yes Man follows this formula pretty much to a tee. It was lively and at times fun. I found myself unable to hate it, and at times enjoying it.
Unfortunately the story peters out at the end. It was anything but clever in how it resolved. Carrey's character simply receives permission to stop saying "yes" to everything, with the insight that he should say "yes" to the things that he really wants to do. As far as the woman, he simply pesters her with increased ardor until her will breaks. All that crazy chaotic plot just to get to that point.
Does it work? Barely. Is it watchable? I suppose, if you're in the mood for this sort of thing and can stomach Jim Carrey in a retread of his previous movies. Is it a superior film? I would give you my answer but I made a pact not to use that dreaded "n word" in this post. Ha ha! Get it?
The snow wasn't supposed to start falling until late afternoon on Friday, and the night before I had decided to leave open the question of going to see a movie. By noon, it was still all clear, and after another short debate with myself, I decided in the affirmative, zipping over to Lowell to squeeze in a movie before the flakes started falling. Who knows what it would be like on my way back, but for now at least, the roads were unchanged.
I chose Lowell because unlike Leominster, it is one of those beautiful ultramodern multiplexes with a huge concession area with various foodstuffs and treats, as well as (more importantly) a well-lit coffee-shop style seating area in an ample heated lobby. That meant I could sit and read by sunlight until the movie started. Leominster is fine for a quick show, getting in and out, but I wanted to give myself plenty of time today, just in case. Besides I didn't want to get caught in an unheated auditorium like I did with Delgo.
What to see? There were many options. I debated in my head on the way to Lowell and settled on the new Jim Carrey movie, Yes Man, which had just been released that day. I had been joking with my sister that December was an incredible challenge for me, with releases starring Keanu Reeves, Jim Carrey, Tom Cruise, and (piece de resistance) Adam Sandler. "One down, three to go," I told her, after coming home from The Day the Earth Stood Still. Really I should throw in Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn too.
But Carrey can make an interesting flick now and then (like this one) and as I said, I like to give every movie its own fair showing before judging it.
My friend Thor would classify Yes Man as a movie based on "gag." In this case, as you know if you've seen any of the trailers, the gag is that Carrey's character---a lonely man shut off from life---makes a pact to say "yes" to every offer to him for an entire year. And away we go!
A cinematic story based on such a gag must inevitably have the following narrative: at first the gag works to the benefit of the protagonist. Then eventually it will lead him into some serious trouble which causes him to rethink the whole venture. The critical issues will become: how does he resolve these second-stage difficulties created by the gag, and how does he eventually terminate the gag while gaining some overall positive result?
Since this is a romantic comedy, it must follow that the gag will lead him to his true love. She must appear by the end of Act One, in the "beneficial" part of the gag. The challenges he faces in Act Two will be of the nature of threatening his new-found love. The resolution of the story issues mentioned above will also involve the resolution of the difficulties in his new relationship. From this, the screenplay pretty much writes itself.
One can also deduce that Act Three of the movie, which involves resolving the challenge to his new relationship, must deal with the "Swindled Woman Problem."
Briefly put, the Swindled Woman Problem, which crops up at regular intervals in Hollywood romantic comedies, is a plot point generated by any romantic-comedy centered on a gag involving the male lead. It arises in cases where the gag (a bet, a pact, a conspiracy of some sort) causes the male lead to meet his true love and begin pursuing her, initially with some kind of ulterior motive. He will eventually fall in love with her in a genuine sense, but when the gag is inevitably revealed to her, she will conclude (rightfully) that his desire was not in earnest. She will become angry and will exile him from her life. Hence, the Swindled Woman.
To make amends, the male lead must suffer a downfall and punishment (painful alienation from the love of the woman), and must then save the day by somehow convincing her of the genuineness of his desire and love for her.
Such stories can often be judged partly on the cleverness by which they resolve (terminate) the gag, and by which the hero convinces the woman that his desire is not counterfeit.
Yes Man follows this formula pretty much to a tee. It was lively and at times fun. I found myself unable to hate it, and at times enjoying it.
Unfortunately the story peters out at the end. It was anything but clever in how it resolved. Carrey's character simply receives permission to stop saying "yes" to everything, with the insight that he should say "yes" to the things that he really wants to do. As far as the woman, he simply pesters her with increased ardor until her will breaks. All that crazy chaotic plot just to get to that point.
Does it work? Barely. Is it watchable? I suppose, if you're in the mood for this sort of thing and can stomach Jim Carrey in a retread of his previous movies. Is it a superior film? I would give you my answer but I made a pact not to use that dreaded "n word" in this post. Ha ha! Get it?
Punisher: War Zone
After Delgo, I had to hang around Leominster for a showing of another movie that was sprinting out of theaters: Punisher: War Zone. As in the case of Transporter 3, I had not seen any of the previous movies in the series, so forgive me I speak out of ignorance. Moreover, I am not familiar with the comic book series upon which it is based.
In the opening of the movie, we see a ruthless organized crime family---Italian-Americans in New York City. These are really bad guys. The whole family is evil. They don't even treat each other very nicely. Yawn.
Then the hero arrives. Without a word or howdy-maam, he proceeds to ruthlessly butcher the entire family. Hurray! The police arrive, but they let him slip away on purpose.
By this time I'm wondering if I can even stay in the god-damn theater to finish watching this crap.
"Great," I said, "another movie about psychopathic mass murderer portrayed as a hero dispensing justice."
But then the movie did something absolutely startling: it labeled the "hero" as a mass-murderer. The police are actually after him (well, at least officially). The mass-murdering-hero expresses remorse over killing someone and tries to make amends. But his actions eventually lead to chaos, and the deaths of people close to him.
The uncanny similarity of this story to The Dark Knight is impossible to ignore, right down to the disfigured villain, who in this case is called "Jigsaw" instead of "The Joker." But I couldn't help having the following heretical thought: I liked this movie more than the Batman flick of last summer.
Certainly The Dark Knight is more complex and artistically daring, but in its simplicity, Punisher: War Zone actually presents a coherent theme that avoids some of the fatal logical inconsistencies of TDK. I enjoyed it more as a story, especially considering it flies by, at about an hour and half.
But by the end of the movie, something had begun to bother me very deeply about this movie, as well as The Dark Knight and many other recent films of this type. It was something I couldn't put my figure on until now, but thanks to the lucidity of this very violent and bloody film, I was finally able to see it.
I will have to write about it in a following post, but I guess I could state it for now as this: The War Zone Does Not Exist.
In the opening of the movie, we see a ruthless organized crime family---Italian-Americans in New York City. These are really bad guys. The whole family is evil. They don't even treat each other very nicely. Yawn.
Then the hero arrives. Without a word or howdy-maam, he proceeds to ruthlessly butcher the entire family. Hurray! The police arrive, but they let him slip away on purpose.
By this time I'm wondering if I can even stay in the god-damn theater to finish watching this crap.
"Great," I said, "another movie about psychopathic mass murderer portrayed as a hero dispensing justice."
But then the movie did something absolutely startling: it labeled the "hero" as a mass-murderer. The police are actually after him (well, at least officially). The mass-murdering-hero expresses remorse over killing someone and tries to make amends. But his actions eventually lead to chaos, and the deaths of people close to him.
The uncanny similarity of this story to The Dark Knight is impossible to ignore, right down to the disfigured villain, who in this case is called "Jigsaw" instead of "The Joker." But I couldn't help having the following heretical thought: I liked this movie more than the Batman flick of last summer.
Certainly The Dark Knight is more complex and artistically daring, but in its simplicity, Punisher: War Zone actually presents a coherent theme that avoids some of the fatal logical inconsistencies of TDK. I enjoyed it more as a story, especially considering it flies by, at about an hour and half.
But by the end of the movie, something had begun to bother me very deeply about this movie, as well as The Dark Knight and many other recent films of this type. It was something I couldn't put my figure on until now, but thanks to the lucidity of this very violent and bloody film, I was finally able to see it.
I will have to write about it in a following post, but I guess I could state it for now as this: The War Zone Does Not Exist.
Delgo
My vow to see all the theatrical releases of 2008, and to see as many as possible in the theater instead of DVD, is not a hard-and-fast rule, but has some wiggle room. For example, I decided that seeing straight-to-DVD releases, as well as certain children's animation (such as the Barbie movie) would be at my discretion. There is only so much time in life.
When I saw the posters for Delgo a couple months back, I figured it might fit into this exception category. But everything changed the minute I read on Yahoo that Animated 'Delgo' has Worst Wide Release Opening Ever. The movie made only half a million dollars in its opening weekend while showing in over 2000 theaters. It beat the previous record holder, P2 (2007) by bringing in only one-fourth as much.
In his article, Jonathan Crow explains why:
So he went out and made it, hiring an incredible range of big-name voice talent along the way, including Anne Bancroft in her final movie ever. But there was one big problem:
That pretty much tells the tale. No tv commericals. No trailers. Result: an average of $237 per screen in its opening weekend.
All of this screamed to me that I absolutely had to go see it. It went straight to the top of my priority list.
But I had to act fast. As of last week, it was showing in over a dozen locations around Boston. Google told me that after Thursday, this number would be down to zero. Never had I seen a movie be driven from the box office so fast. If I wanted to see it in theaters after Thursday, I would have to drive all the way to Saco, Maine.
So off to Leominster I went, on a frigid ice-strewn day, leaving early just so I absolutely knew I catch the 5 pm showing. I had so much extra time, I waited in the local Barnes and Noble, where I read the complete F. Scott Fitzgerald short story "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and the complete script for the play "Doubt: a Parable" by John Patrick Shanley. Even my reading is movie preparation lately.
When I got back to the multiplex and walked up to the front, I was greeted again by an ominous sign, nicely laser printed: The auditorium for Delgo has no heat. We sincerely apologize.
Somehow the idea of extra hardships in seeing this movie made it all the better. It would make a better story.
It turned out that the auditorium with broken heat was one of the biggest in the multiplex---probably five hundred seats. There I was, the only person shivering in the dark. Well, I wasn't shivering, since I kept bundled up, and the temperature wasn't that bad inside after all.
Nor was the movie, really, so long as you can handle the creepy Uncanny valley effects of lizard-like people talking to each for an hour an half. It also isn't bad so long as you can digest a wretched, tired regurgitation of every mystical/spiritual fantasy cliche from the Star Wars series and the Lord of the Rings.
Watching it, I couldn't help thinking how the entire fantasy genre has run its course. This was especially true listening to Michael Clarke Duncan (as the voice of a mystical elder) reciting the tenets of telekinesis to his pupil. "You have to let go," he said. It was all the same stuff as Yoda, only said in the tired voice of someone reciting a prayer, the words of which have entirely lost any meaning. We as audience are so familiar with the Star Wars "religion" that all the story need do is to remind us of it in order for us to follow the story. This is where genres go to die.
Well, at least the movie tried. In the end, I couldn't help but root for it on some level, and for the all the folk in Georgia who toiled on it. The most positive note: I particularly did enjoy that the plot revolved around the use of false flag operations to start a major war. It's amazing where you have to go to find truth these days.
When I saw the posters for Delgo a couple months back, I figured it might fit into this exception category. But everything changed the minute I read on Yahoo that Animated 'Delgo' has Worst Wide Release Opening Ever. The movie made only half a million dollars in its opening weekend while showing in over 2000 theaters. It beat the previous record holder, P2 (2007) by bringing in only one-fourth as much.
In his article, Jonathan Crow explains why:
This is all too bad because the story of the making of "Delgo" has the makings of a great Hollywood underdog story. 36-year-old entrepreneur Marc Adler decided he wanted to direct and produce a $40 million computer animated kids' flick completely independent of Tinseltown behemoths like Disney and Dreamworks.
So he went out and made it, hiring an incredible range of big-name voice talent along the way, including Anne Bancroft in her final movie ever. But there was one big problem:
And when Adler couldn't get a Hollywood studio interested in his movie, he raised eyebrows by releasing it himself through distributor-for-hire Freestyle Releasing. It was a huge risk; one that ultimately didn't pay off. There wasn't the sort of marketing budget needed to make a film stand out in the already crowded holiday movie season.
That pretty much tells the tale. No tv commericals. No trailers. Result: an average of $237 per screen in its opening weekend.
All of this screamed to me that I absolutely had to go see it. It went straight to the top of my priority list.
But I had to act fast. As of last week, it was showing in over a dozen locations around Boston. Google told me that after Thursday, this number would be down to zero. Never had I seen a movie be driven from the box office so fast. If I wanted to see it in theaters after Thursday, I would have to drive all the way to Saco, Maine.
So off to Leominster I went, on a frigid ice-strewn day, leaving early just so I absolutely knew I catch the 5 pm showing. I had so much extra time, I waited in the local Barnes and Noble, where I read the complete F. Scott Fitzgerald short story "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and the complete script for the play "Doubt: a Parable" by John Patrick Shanley. Even my reading is movie preparation lately.
When I got back to the multiplex and walked up to the front, I was greeted again by an ominous sign, nicely laser printed: The auditorium for Delgo has no heat. We sincerely apologize.
Somehow the idea of extra hardships in seeing this movie made it all the better. It would make a better story.
It turned out that the auditorium with broken heat was one of the biggest in the multiplex---probably five hundred seats. There I was, the only person shivering in the dark. Well, I wasn't shivering, since I kept bundled up, and the temperature wasn't that bad inside after all.
Nor was the movie, really, so long as you can handle the creepy Uncanny valley effects of lizard-like people talking to each for an hour an half. It also isn't bad so long as you can digest a wretched, tired regurgitation of every mystical/spiritual fantasy cliche from the Star Wars series and the Lord of the Rings.
Watching it, I couldn't help thinking how the entire fantasy genre has run its course. This was especially true listening to Michael Clarke Duncan (as the voice of a mystical elder) reciting the tenets of telekinesis to his pupil. "You have to let go," he said. It was all the same stuff as Yoda, only said in the tired voice of someone reciting a prayer, the words of which have entirely lost any meaning. We as audience are so familiar with the Star Wars "religion" that all the story need do is to remind us of it in order for us to follow the story. This is where genres go to die.
Well, at least the movie tried. In the end, I couldn't help but root for it on some level, and for the all the folk in Georgia who toiled on it. The most positive note: I particularly did enjoy that the plot revolved around the use of false flag operations to start a major war. It's amazing where you have to go to find truth these days.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Rachel Getting Married
There was an hour gap before my next movie at Waltham, and I took the opportunity to walk out in the dark cold evening to head for my now-favorite little hamburger joint by the railroad station, where I'd eaten last time. By now I felt somewhat like a regular. It's amazing how quickly you can make a place your own, even if it's only a small corner of it.
After wolfing down my hamburger I was back in the same theater, buying a ticket from the same guy at the counter, and heading back into the same auditorium to sit in exactly the same seat. Well, I wound up moving my seat because of some of the folks around me, but you can't have everything. Nothing happens the same way twice.
Also I cheated by sneaking my extra french fries into the auditorium, and eating them from the bag in my pocket. At some point in the future, I'll buy some popcorn there.
If the first film of my double-bill had been about the resilient buoyancy of the feminine spirit, this one would show the other extreme---a woman at the low ebb of life, trying to keep from sinking, and to claw her way back into anything resembling happiness.
There's been so much written about Rachel Getting Married, and I fear duplicating it all here. Basically I would probably agree with anything positive said about the movie.
As I settled down with clandestine french fries during the opening credits, I suddenly remembered, "Oh yeah. Jonathan Demme directed this," and from the opening shot, I felt in familiar cinematic territory regarding the heroine. Demme created one of the greatest heroines of cinema history---Jodie Foster as Agent Starling in The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Demme's opening shot of Lambs gives us the salient sketch of Starling, and her upcoming journey---she is alone on an obstacle course, sweating and panting heavily from dogged exertion, pulling herself up a mountain on a rope until she reaches the top.
Rachel opens with the same reveal-all character portrait of the protagonist. Anne Hathaway as Kym (Rachel is the protagonist's sister) is in a hospital rehab courtyard with a nurse and fellow patient. She is smoking---something wicked but allowed by the rules. She confronts the fellow patient over his own confiscated cigarette lighter, pointing out why he can't have it back because of his previous behavior. At the end of the scene, she is released out into the world.
We are inclined to feel sympathy for our protagonists, but the story does everything it can not only to challenge her, but to challenge us to keep liking her. At one moment, we are on her side. The next moment we are not so sure.
The story revolves around her visit home and her attendance at her sister's suburban Connecticut wedding. The first two-thirds of the movie is concerned mainly with the build-up to the ceremony, and the simultaneous inflation of the tension between Kym and her sister. At the same we are exposed to a mystery: who is Ethan, and what became of him?
Because the protagonist is just out of rehab, the essential story tension must therefore center on whether or not she will "relapse" in some fashion. Will the wedding come off as planned? Will Kym melt down and commit some horrible act of violence against herself or her family? Will she triumph over her challenges in the end? Will she rise or fall?
Just when I thought I had the movie figured out, with it's back-and-forth sympathies, it explodes in a critical highly-charged scene in which Kym asks an obvious question to one of her parents, one that would have gone clumsily unasked in a lesser movie. From that moment on, the ping-ponging of sympathies suddenly halts, and the story rockets forward with sudden laser clarity and alignment between the characters. We feel the momentum at our backs now, and we know whose side will be on for the rest of the movie, no matter how it turns out.
Demme, as I mentioned, is a master at evoking female performances that are about unearthing the repressed and violent truths in the human spirit. Rachel is all that and more. It's not really a wedding movie---for one thing the groom's family is somewhat downplayed, although the groom himself helps unwittingly drive the story in a critical scene involving a dishwasher competition. The fact that the groom's family is black gives them literal contrast when they otherwise might fade into the background of the story of Kym's family. It also contributes to a pan-racial cast of the movie that evokes a subtext about the dysfunction of the "American family" played out against the rest of the world of 2008.
If I were going to compare this any previous landmark movie, the one that leaps to mind is the much-overly-maligned Ordinary People (1980), which is similarly about the inevitable eruption of repressed suburban family dysfunction.
What an awesome film! As it stands right now, this has beaten out W for my favorite of the year.
But please don't let that keep you from seeing it, in case you find my enthusiasm off-putting. OK, do whatever the hell you want, dammit. See if I care!
After wolfing down my hamburger I was back in the same theater, buying a ticket from the same guy at the counter, and heading back into the same auditorium to sit in exactly the same seat. Well, I wound up moving my seat because of some of the folks around me, but you can't have everything. Nothing happens the same way twice.
Also I cheated by sneaking my extra french fries into the auditorium, and eating them from the bag in my pocket. At some point in the future, I'll buy some popcorn there.
If the first film of my double-bill had been about the resilient buoyancy of the feminine spirit, this one would show the other extreme---a woman at the low ebb of life, trying to keep from sinking, and to claw her way back into anything resembling happiness.
There's been so much written about Rachel Getting Married, and I fear duplicating it all here. Basically I would probably agree with anything positive said about the movie.
As I settled down with clandestine french fries during the opening credits, I suddenly remembered, "Oh yeah. Jonathan Demme directed this," and from the opening shot, I felt in familiar cinematic territory regarding the heroine. Demme created one of the greatest heroines of cinema history---Jodie Foster as Agent Starling in The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Demme's opening shot of Lambs gives us the salient sketch of Starling, and her upcoming journey---she is alone on an obstacle course, sweating and panting heavily from dogged exertion, pulling herself up a mountain on a rope until she reaches the top.
Rachel opens with the same reveal-all character portrait of the protagonist. Anne Hathaway as Kym (Rachel is the protagonist's sister) is in a hospital rehab courtyard with a nurse and fellow patient. She is smoking---something wicked but allowed by the rules. She confronts the fellow patient over his own confiscated cigarette lighter, pointing out why he can't have it back because of his previous behavior. At the end of the scene, she is released out into the world.
We are inclined to feel sympathy for our protagonists, but the story does everything it can not only to challenge her, but to challenge us to keep liking her. At one moment, we are on her side. The next moment we are not so sure.
The story revolves around her visit home and her attendance at her sister's suburban Connecticut wedding. The first two-thirds of the movie is concerned mainly with the build-up to the ceremony, and the simultaneous inflation of the tension between Kym and her sister. At the same we are exposed to a mystery: who is Ethan, and what became of him?
Because the protagonist is just out of rehab, the essential story tension must therefore center on whether or not she will "relapse" in some fashion. Will the wedding come off as planned? Will Kym melt down and commit some horrible act of violence against herself or her family? Will she triumph over her challenges in the end? Will she rise or fall?
Just when I thought I had the movie figured out, with it's back-and-forth sympathies, it explodes in a critical highly-charged scene in which Kym asks an obvious question to one of her parents, one that would have gone clumsily unasked in a lesser movie. From that moment on, the ping-ponging of sympathies suddenly halts, and the story rockets forward with sudden laser clarity and alignment between the characters. We feel the momentum at our backs now, and we know whose side will be on for the rest of the movie, no matter how it turns out.
Demme, as I mentioned, is a master at evoking female performances that are about unearthing the repressed and violent truths in the human spirit. Rachel is all that and more. It's not really a wedding movie---for one thing the groom's family is somewhat downplayed, although the groom himself helps unwittingly drive the story in a critical scene involving a dishwasher competition. The fact that the groom's family is black gives them literal contrast when they otherwise might fade into the background of the story of Kym's family. It also contributes to a pan-racial cast of the movie that evokes a subtext about the dysfunction of the "American family" played out against the rest of the world of 2008.
If I were going to compare this any previous landmark movie, the one that leaps to mind is the much-overly-maligned Ordinary People (1980), which is similarly about the inevitable eruption of repressed suburban family dysfunction.
What an awesome film! As it stands right now, this has beaten out W for my favorite of the year.
But please don't let that keep you from seeing it, in case you find my enthusiasm off-putting. OK, do whatever the hell you want, dammit. See if I care!
Happy-Go-Lucky
Tuesday saw me heading back to my favorite model city, Waltham, to catch showings of two movies that had been on my list for weeks, but which had eluded me. Both are about young women, and it seemed natural to see them both on the same day.
First up, Happy-Go-Lucky. Mike Leigh directs Sally Hawkins as "Poppy," a 30-year-old English schoolteacher who lives in South London. In the first scene of the movie, we see her floating down the street on her bicycle, smiling at all the world as if radiating her own buoyant state to everyone around her. We establish that she is not easily thrown off her mood. A grumpy unresponsive male bookstore clerk does not shake her mood at all. Nor does the theft of her bicycle, which elicits only a wistful "I didn't even get the chance to say good-bye."
The movie is essentially an extended character sketch in the female spirit. The protagonist is the embodiment of a certain kind of girlish happiness that is the province of women alone. On some level, she is innocent---although we know this is not literally true, but symbolic.
Nevertheless the movie can be about only one thing: the inevitable challenges that will confront her happy state. By what manner will these challenges arise? Will they topple her out of her happiness? Will she fall out of grace?
The story surprised me by its cleverness in how it confronts the heroine. In a lesser Hollywood-type story, she would suffer some kind of catastrophic downfall, through bad decisions, bad luck, or sabotage. Instead Poppy is confronting by a different and potential more sinister assault, in the form of a steady drip-drip of exposure to sad, troubled, and angry people. Individually they are not sufficient to break her spirit, but cumulatively, they begin to take their toll upon her.
The plot is driven by the bicycle theft at the beginning of the movie, leading her to undertake driving lessons from a raging angry instructor who literally invokes the name of a fallen angel over and over as he shouts at her to remember to check her rear-view mirror.
She also meets a female flamenco instructor who uses her sorrow and rage at her lover's infidelity as a teaching tool. One of her students turns out to be a bully, and she is driven to understand why, in order to help save him.
Inevitably the loss of "innocence" through exposure to the world outside her mood-bubble will have the side effect of her finding love. This is the archetypal path of womanhood in narrative---mature love comes at the price of abandoning girlish innocence.
Or does it really? To what degree must this be true? Perhaps worldly exposure is necessary, but the spirit can remain unbroken? This is the essential question of the movie. The overall verdict is foreshadowed near the opening of the movie, when Poppy is on a bus which is pitching and stopping in traffic. She is holding a metal pole, bent slightly sideways by the lurching of the bus, but smiling as she keeps her poise amidst the crowd. The last shot of the movie seals the deal, and says everything about her resilient buoyancy.
First up, Happy-Go-Lucky. Mike Leigh directs Sally Hawkins as "Poppy," a 30-year-old English schoolteacher who lives in South London. In the first scene of the movie, we see her floating down the street on her bicycle, smiling at all the world as if radiating her own buoyant state to everyone around her. We establish that she is not easily thrown off her mood. A grumpy unresponsive male bookstore clerk does not shake her mood at all. Nor does the theft of her bicycle, which elicits only a wistful "I didn't even get the chance to say good-bye."
The movie is essentially an extended character sketch in the female spirit. The protagonist is the embodiment of a certain kind of girlish happiness that is the province of women alone. On some level, she is innocent---although we know this is not literally true, but symbolic.
Nevertheless the movie can be about only one thing: the inevitable challenges that will confront her happy state. By what manner will these challenges arise? Will they topple her out of her happiness? Will she fall out of grace?
The story surprised me by its cleverness in how it confronts the heroine. In a lesser Hollywood-type story, she would suffer some kind of catastrophic downfall, through bad decisions, bad luck, or sabotage. Instead Poppy is confronting by a different and potential more sinister assault, in the form of a steady drip-drip of exposure to sad, troubled, and angry people. Individually they are not sufficient to break her spirit, but cumulatively, they begin to take their toll upon her.
The plot is driven by the bicycle theft at the beginning of the movie, leading her to undertake driving lessons from a raging angry instructor who literally invokes the name of a fallen angel over and over as he shouts at her to remember to check her rear-view mirror.
She also meets a female flamenco instructor who uses her sorrow and rage at her lover's infidelity as a teaching tool. One of her students turns out to be a bully, and she is driven to understand why, in order to help save him.
Inevitably the loss of "innocence" through exposure to the world outside her mood-bubble will have the side effect of her finding love. This is the archetypal path of womanhood in narrative---mature love comes at the price of abandoning girlish innocence.
Or does it really? To what degree must this be true? Perhaps worldly exposure is necessary, but the spirit can remain unbroken? This is the essential question of the movie. The overall verdict is foreshadowed near the opening of the movie, when Poppy is on a bus which is pitching and stopping in traffic. She is holding a metal pole, bent slightly sideways by the lurching of the bus, but smiling as she keeps her poise amidst the crowd. The last shot of the movie seals the deal, and says everything about her resilient buoyancy.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
JCVD
My lengthy ongoing bout with an ear infection caused me to miss nearly a week of moviegoing time. When you're trying to see all the releases in theaters, this is an eternity, especially when you're still playing catch-up after a long trip, and the holiday movie rush is just around the corner.
Now that I'm finally on my feet again, I realized that it had been over two weeks since I'd been brave enough to venture out to a complete new theater. Since one of my goals is to explore Massachusetts while my sister and her family still live here (they are planning to move back west in the spring), I felt like I needed to be a little daring again.
As it happened, I had no choice. The Lexington Flick (map), a two-screen downtown cinema in the town made famous in the Revolutionary War, was showing JCVD, the new French-language movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme (hence the acronym of the title). It had come and gone in the Boston art houses last month without my being able to see it, and I felt a great joy at seeing it appear again in the listings, moreover with a much shorter drive.
Yes, I know what you're thinking. Jean-Claude Van Damme? Art house cinema? Huh? If you've heard of this movie, you know what I'm talking about, but for those that haven't, Jean Claude essentially plays himself in a movie about his own life. You still following me?
I figured it was only going to be in Lexington for a week, and this would probably be my own chance to see on the big screen. As such it went straight to the top of my must-see list this week.
I was psyched too that I was forced to venture into Lexington for the first time, especially to make a trip to a Main Street cinema instead of another boring multiplex. I chose Monday evening because I didn't give a damn about any of the tv shows on that night. I would have preferred daylight, for the reason that I always hate driving in the dark, especially when I'm sightseeing, but evening was my only choice.
The route on Google Maps seemed a cinch. I left the farmstead with a little under a hour to spare, thinking it would be plenty of time.
Of course it wasn't. I got off at the wrong Lexington exit and didn't discover the mistake until I was about a mile down the road. Figuring I had a good enough grasp of Lexington geography, and having memorized the main thoroughfare names, as well as the address of the theater, I kept heading in the same direction. At the first main street, I pulled over at a gas station.
Inside there were three men chatting. I asked one of them where I could find the movie theater. He gave me precise directions, then said, in a deadpan, "That'll be twenty bucks, please."
Well it sounded like a deadpan. With my clogged right ear, I've lost much of the ability to discern nuance in people's voices. Knowing it was a joke, I shot him a "you're the man" hand gesture and smile, then turned and left.
As I turned the key of my ignition, he came out of the little building. Seeing me, he said, almost gruffly, "Hey, where's my money?"
Cripes, I'm getting out of here. A few minutes later I was in what obviously had to be the center of town. I could tell this because Lexington turns out to be one of those chichi little burgs like the ones in the Hamptons. Lots of nice little shops all lit up for the holiday.
But not a damn place to park, and I was running out of time. I circled back around the shops and found a municipal lot, all of them with parking meters. I found one of the few remaining meters spaces in the lot and parked in it.
I'd forgotten about that little bit of New England wisdom---there are parking meters everywhere. Always always always always bring plenty of quarters, since most meters don't take any kind of change but that.
I had foolishly forgotten to bring my stash of change. But surely after dark no one would be checking the meters? I made a quick survey of the cars around me. Every single one of them had time left on the meter. None were expired. A bad sign, since these were probably locals who knew the score. Fortunately I dug up one quarter off the floor of my car and put it in. The meter went up to a hour. That would have to do.
The little Flick theater was on the other side of the street, its quaint old-fashioned marquee squeezed between several shops. After weaving through traffic to cross, I pulled open the glass door and found a young women at the spartan counter. Out of breath, I pulled out my debit card, since I was out of cash.
"Ooooh, I'm sorry. We only take cash." Fantastic.
"Any ATMs around here?"
"There's one across the street---Bank of America."
Dodging traffic again, I was standing in front of the bank, swiped my card and was inside. It really steamed me to be doing this, since for the very first time on my trip, I was using a non-free ATM. Up until this point I had very methodically taken out cash only at free ATMs, using the Allpoint network website. Now my streak was broken. But I had only myself to blame.
I went across traffic once again, this time using the zebra crosswalk with the big sign saying that state law mandates that cars must stop for pedestrians. As I did so, a car approaching the crosswalk, with plenty of time to stop, leaned on its horn. Fucking Massachusetts drivers will honk for anything that makes them even consider tapping on the brakes. Without breaking stride or turning, I flashed the driver the universal one-finger salute of appreciation.
Finally I got my ticket. It was one of those generic kinds, emerging with a mechanical thunk from the little metallic flap on the counter.
Of course I wanted to linger in the lobby and appreciate the aura of such an old theater, but it was already past showtime. I sprinted up the stairs to theater number two.
As everyone knows, features never start at the published showtime. There are always ads and trailers. Well, not at the Lexington Flick. They were very prompt, and to my extreme displeasure, I found I had missed the opening seconds of the opening credits. Above all else, I just detest not seeing every frame of the movie.
But at least I'm finally here. It's a tiny little box of theater with a low ceiling, wider than deep, and a strange configuration of the screen with a black ramp in front of the seats. Two other audience members besides me. The old seats were too loose. I moved twice to find a comfortable one. At last, it's you and me, Jean-Claude!
The movie is definitely in the genre of postmodern-breakdown movies that blur the line between "movie reality" and "reality reality." The ability to do this, and to comment meaningfully on the difference between the two, is one of the strengths of postmodern cinema as a whole, and movies like this automatically start out with a "plus one" in my book and go up from there, unless they are overly clever.
At the beginning, over the opening credits, we see a sepia tone Jean-Claude kicking and punching his way through scores of opponents, most of them armed, until finally---the fourth wall (within the movie) is broken and we see that, not surprisingly, we are on a movie set. The director, a disinterested young punk type who speaks in Mandarin through an interpreter, is haranguing Jean-Claude about his performance, overriding the veteran actor's advice. Jean-Claude complains he is too old for this type of scene.
"It's the purity of the character," the punk director says. "Purity," Jean-Claude mutters to himself obediently and earnestly. Like all good movies, this one is going to put its protagonist through some sort of obstacle-course hell.
In short order, Jean-Claude is in a court room in the United States, in a custody battle for his daughter. If you're a Jean-Claude hater, your case will made against him here. His wife's attorney proceeds to tear him apart, proclaiming him to be a hack actor and a bad parental influence through his choice of roles. He recites a litany of the methods of death in the actor's filmography: "Death by strangulation, death by neck-breaking, death by gunshot..." The list is so long we never hear the end of it, and it is too painful for the actor himself to listen to.
Then he's back in Belgium, in his hometown. At a small grocery, several fans recognize him and demand a photo, for which he complies. He states he has to run across the street to the bank. He'll be back in five minutes, he says, for autographs.
What proceeds after that is a cascading mystery plot involving a bank robbery gone wrong. The Sidney Lumet style of the story is buttressed by the uncanny resemblance of one of the heavies to John Cazale in Dog Day Afternoon (1975).
The mystery part of the plot involves initially around the question: is the robbery real? Is Jean-Claude Van Damme actually robbing a bank in his hometown? Police and swat teams arrive. Cheering crowds gather on the streets to support him.
Will Jean-Claude triumph? Will he restore his honor? Will he kick some ass? Will he be a hero in real life as in the movies? Will he get to see his daughter again? The story is propelled by the tension of these questions, and if you're aren't repulsed by the idea of seeing, well, a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, you might actually enjoy it, as I certainly did.
For such a postmodern film, the story had a beautifully classical ending regarding honor and justice. At first what seems like injustice turns out to be, on further reflection, exactly how the movie needed to end.
At least that's what I concluded as I walked out the auditorium. Since I'd stayed to the end of the credits, as always, and was the last one in the theater, it was shuttered and dark, and the teenage employee had to unlock the front door for me. When I got back to my car, I found the entire municipal lot deserted, and my car standing alone at its meter. Time was expired, of course, but there was no ticket. Paying for the movie with cash had left me with two extra quarters in my pocket. I dropped one in the meter and twisted the knob, sending the arrow up to an hour, then immediately got in my car and headed home.
Now that I'm finally on my feet again, I realized that it had been over two weeks since I'd been brave enough to venture out to a complete new theater. Since one of my goals is to explore Massachusetts while my sister and her family still live here (they are planning to move back west in the spring), I felt like I needed to be a little daring again.
As it happened, I had no choice. The Lexington Flick (map), a two-screen downtown cinema in the town made famous in the Revolutionary War, was showing JCVD, the new French-language movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme (hence the acronym of the title). It had come and gone in the Boston art houses last month without my being able to see it, and I felt a great joy at seeing it appear again in the listings, moreover with a much shorter drive.
Yes, I know what you're thinking. Jean-Claude Van Damme? Art house cinema? Huh? If you've heard of this movie, you know what I'm talking about, but for those that haven't, Jean Claude essentially plays himself in a movie about his own life. You still following me?
I figured it was only going to be in Lexington for a week, and this would probably be my own chance to see on the big screen. As such it went straight to the top of my must-see list this week.
I was psyched too that I was forced to venture into Lexington for the first time, especially to make a trip to a Main Street cinema instead of another boring multiplex. I chose Monday evening because I didn't give a damn about any of the tv shows on that night. I would have preferred daylight, for the reason that I always hate driving in the dark, especially when I'm sightseeing, but evening was my only choice.
The route on Google Maps seemed a cinch. I left the farmstead with a little under a hour to spare, thinking it would be plenty of time.
Of course it wasn't. I got off at the wrong Lexington exit and didn't discover the mistake until I was about a mile down the road. Figuring I had a good enough grasp of Lexington geography, and having memorized the main thoroughfare names, as well as the address of the theater, I kept heading in the same direction. At the first main street, I pulled over at a gas station.
Inside there were three men chatting. I asked one of them where I could find the movie theater. He gave me precise directions, then said, in a deadpan, "That'll be twenty bucks, please."
Well it sounded like a deadpan. With my clogged right ear, I've lost much of the ability to discern nuance in people's voices. Knowing it was a joke, I shot him a "you're the man" hand gesture and smile, then turned and left.
As I turned the key of my ignition, he came out of the little building. Seeing me, he said, almost gruffly, "Hey, where's my money?"
Cripes, I'm getting out of here. A few minutes later I was in what obviously had to be the center of town. I could tell this because Lexington turns out to be one of those chichi little burgs like the ones in the Hamptons. Lots of nice little shops all lit up for the holiday.
But not a damn place to park, and I was running out of time. I circled back around the shops and found a municipal lot, all of them with parking meters. I found one of the few remaining meters spaces in the lot and parked in it.
I'd forgotten about that little bit of New England wisdom---there are parking meters everywhere. Always always always always bring plenty of quarters, since most meters don't take any kind of change but that.
I had foolishly forgotten to bring my stash of change. But surely after dark no one would be checking the meters? I made a quick survey of the cars around me. Every single one of them had time left on the meter. None were expired. A bad sign, since these were probably locals who knew the score. Fortunately I dug up one quarter off the floor of my car and put it in. The meter went up to a hour. That would have to do.
The little Flick theater was on the other side of the street, its quaint old-fashioned marquee squeezed between several shops. After weaving through traffic to cross, I pulled open the glass door and found a young women at the spartan counter. Out of breath, I pulled out my debit card, since I was out of cash.
"Ooooh, I'm sorry. We only take cash." Fantastic.
"Any ATMs around here?"
"There's one across the street---Bank of America."
Dodging traffic again, I was standing in front of the bank, swiped my card and was inside. It really steamed me to be doing this, since for the very first time on my trip, I was using a non-free ATM. Up until this point I had very methodically taken out cash only at free ATMs, using the Allpoint network website. Now my streak was broken. But I had only myself to blame.
I went across traffic once again, this time using the zebra crosswalk with the big sign saying that state law mandates that cars must stop for pedestrians. As I did so, a car approaching the crosswalk, with plenty of time to stop, leaned on its horn. Fucking Massachusetts drivers will honk for anything that makes them even consider tapping on the brakes. Without breaking stride or turning, I flashed the driver the universal one-finger salute of appreciation.
Finally I got my ticket. It was one of those generic kinds, emerging with a mechanical thunk from the little metallic flap on the counter.
Of course I wanted to linger in the lobby and appreciate the aura of such an old theater, but it was already past showtime. I sprinted up the stairs to theater number two.
As everyone knows, features never start at the published showtime. There are always ads and trailers. Well, not at the Lexington Flick. They were very prompt, and to my extreme displeasure, I found I had missed the opening seconds of the opening credits. Above all else, I just detest not seeing every frame of the movie.
But at least I'm finally here. It's a tiny little box of theater with a low ceiling, wider than deep, and a strange configuration of the screen with a black ramp in front of the seats. Two other audience members besides me. The old seats were too loose. I moved twice to find a comfortable one. At last, it's you and me, Jean-Claude!
The movie is definitely in the genre of postmodern-breakdown movies that blur the line between "movie reality" and "reality reality." The ability to do this, and to comment meaningfully on the difference between the two, is one of the strengths of postmodern cinema as a whole, and movies like this automatically start out with a "plus one" in my book and go up from there, unless they are overly clever.
At the beginning, over the opening credits, we see a sepia tone Jean-Claude kicking and punching his way through scores of opponents, most of them armed, until finally---the fourth wall (within the movie) is broken and we see that, not surprisingly, we are on a movie set. The director, a disinterested young punk type who speaks in Mandarin through an interpreter, is haranguing Jean-Claude about his performance, overriding the veteran actor's advice. Jean-Claude complains he is too old for this type of scene.
"It's the purity of the character," the punk director says. "Purity," Jean-Claude mutters to himself obediently and earnestly. Like all good movies, this one is going to put its protagonist through some sort of obstacle-course hell.
In short order, Jean-Claude is in a court room in the United States, in a custody battle for his daughter. If you're a Jean-Claude hater, your case will made against him here. His wife's attorney proceeds to tear him apart, proclaiming him to be a hack actor and a bad parental influence through his choice of roles. He recites a litany of the methods of death in the actor's filmography: "Death by strangulation, death by neck-breaking, death by gunshot..." The list is so long we never hear the end of it, and it is too painful for the actor himself to listen to.
Then he's back in Belgium, in his hometown. At a small grocery, several fans recognize him and demand a photo, for which he complies. He states he has to run across the street to the bank. He'll be back in five minutes, he says, for autographs.
What proceeds after that is a cascading mystery plot involving a bank robbery gone wrong. The Sidney Lumet style of the story is buttressed by the uncanny resemblance of one of the heavies to John Cazale in Dog Day Afternoon (1975).
The mystery part of the plot involves initially around the question: is the robbery real? Is Jean-Claude Van Damme actually robbing a bank in his hometown? Police and swat teams arrive. Cheering crowds gather on the streets to support him.
Will Jean-Claude triumph? Will he restore his honor? Will he kick some ass? Will he be a hero in real life as in the movies? Will he get to see his daughter again? The story is propelled by the tension of these questions, and if you're aren't repulsed by the idea of seeing, well, a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, you might actually enjoy it, as I certainly did.
For such a postmodern film, the story had a beautifully classical ending regarding honor and justice. At first what seems like injustice turns out to be, on further reflection, exactly how the movie needed to end.
At least that's what I concluded as I walked out the auditorium. Since I'd stayed to the end of the credits, as always, and was the last one in the theater, it was shuttered and dark, and the teenage employee had to unlock the front door for me. When I got back to my car, I found the entire municipal lot deserted, and my car standing alone at its meter. Time was expired, of course, but there was no ticket. Paying for the movie with cash had left me with two extra quarters in my pocket. I dropped one in the meter and twisted the knob, sending the arrow up to an hour, then immediately got in my car and headed home.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Miracle at St. Anna
After reaching the East Coast at the end of October, I had the pleasure of spending a week in Silver Spring, Maryland as the guest of one of my friends, a professional artist with his own studio. I told him about my moviewatching goal, and he suggested right away that I take the opportunity of my visit to enjoy a showing at the newly restored AFI Silver Theatre, the flagship movie house of the American Film Institute in Silver Spring.
The "now showing" movies at the Silver included one I had been anticipating for months: Spike Lee's Miracle at St. Anna, the World War II drama about African American soldiers fighting in Italy. From the trailer, the story seemed like interesting original concept. The mysterious title somehow made me think of the 1969 Stanley Kramer classic Secret of Santa Vittoria, about Italian villagers protecting their wine from the Nazis. The idea of a "miracle" movie appealed to me, considering that even getting to Maryland had felt miraculous to me.
The theater did not disappoint. What had recently been an abandoned urban movie house was now a fully restored jewel just off a stop on the Metro Red Line. I arrived early and killed some time looking at the glowing reviews of the restoration from Clint Eastwood and Danny Glover. I was slightly disappointed that the gift shop didn't have postcards for sale.
But, as you've probably learned by now if you've seen it or read anything about it, the movie sucked. There's no mincing words here: it was just utterly dreadful. It has to be my leading candidate for Disappointment of the Year. The original concept was entirely wasted. The story was a pointless wandering indulgence in Death Porn, a ghastly unintended parody of the postwar Neorealism of, say, Two Women.
Here's a bunch of dead black soldiers in the river. Here's a bunch of dead Italian villagers. Let's kill everyone. Isn't it fun?
The most sympathetic character in the movie was a Wehrmacht colonel who gives an American black soldier a Luger pistol and tells him to defend himself.
The only decent part of the movie was the score, which lingered in my head as I drove home.
At the end, all I could think was, "What miracle!?" The movie fails on every level---as a statement against war, and as a statement against racism. It fails as suspense. It fails as a mystery. It fails as history.
My review of the theater itself: it's beautiful, to be sure, and I'm very glad they restored it, but considering the horrible state of parking in downtown Silver Spring, the main reason I would go out of my way to see a film there would be to support the AFI over the corporations that run the multiplexes. On the other hand, the Silver has regular talks by well-known people in the industry. I had just missed Farley Granger!
The "now showing" movies at the Silver included one I had been anticipating for months: Spike Lee's Miracle at St. Anna, the World War II drama about African American soldiers fighting in Italy. From the trailer, the story seemed like interesting original concept. The mysterious title somehow made me think of the 1969 Stanley Kramer classic Secret of Santa Vittoria, about Italian villagers protecting their wine from the Nazis. The idea of a "miracle" movie appealed to me, considering that even getting to Maryland had felt miraculous to me.
The theater did not disappoint. What had recently been an abandoned urban movie house was now a fully restored jewel just off a stop on the Metro Red Line. I arrived early and killed some time looking at the glowing reviews of the restoration from Clint Eastwood and Danny Glover. I was slightly disappointed that the gift shop didn't have postcards for sale.
But, as you've probably learned by now if you've seen it or read anything about it, the movie sucked. There's no mincing words here: it was just utterly dreadful. It has to be my leading candidate for Disappointment of the Year. The original concept was entirely wasted. The story was a pointless wandering indulgence in Death Porn, a ghastly unintended parody of the postwar Neorealism of, say, Two Women.
Here's a bunch of dead black soldiers in the river. Here's a bunch of dead Italian villagers. Let's kill everyone. Isn't it fun?
The most sympathetic character in the movie was a Wehrmacht colonel who gives an American black soldier a Luger pistol and tells him to defend himself.
The only decent part of the movie was the score, which lingered in my head as I drove home.
At the end, all I could think was, "What miracle!?" The movie fails on every level---as a statement against war, and as a statement against racism. It fails as suspense. It fails as a mystery. It fails as history.
My review of the theater itself: it's beautiful, to be sure, and I'm very glad they restored it, but considering the horrible state of parking in downtown Silver Spring, the main reason I would go out of my way to see a film there would be to support the AFI over the corporations that run the multiplexes. On the other hand, the Silver has regular talks by well-known people in the industry. I had just missed Farley Granger!
Where's Busby Berkeley When You Need Him?
The New York Times finally asks the question I've been asking for several years now.
Unfortunately I think this article really misses the point by miles. From box office returns this fall, Americans now want escapist fantasy, just like they supposedly did during the Great Depression. This may be true about current tastes, but like most commentary about the 1930s, it gets everything utterly and completely wrong. For one thing, the 1930s were the heyday of Warner Brothers gritty, "realistic" crime dramas, like many of the movies Paul Muni made. On the whole, movies of the 1930s explicitly embraced the communal suffering of the times, and discussed it in obvious story terms even in comedies. They were, in effect, the opposite of escapism, which would have been very "unrealistic" to audiences straggling in from the streets.
The Times story mentioned, among other things, Gold Diggers of 1933, which I've discussed in my Kitty Foyle write up as one of my favorite all-time movies. Gold Diggers is certainly lightweight on the surface level, but the opening song is misunderstood today. "We're in the Money" is not a Roaring Twenties-style statement about winning the lottery and becoming suddenly privately rich. If you listen to the lyrics, it's really a rallying cry to the entire public to pick up their spirits in very dark times. The "we" of the title and chorus is actually everyone---you, me, and the guy and gal standing in the bread lines. The women of the Gold Diggers series who were seeking wealthy husbands did so because it was their only avenue to escape wretched poverty. The movies of the times pulled no punches about this reality.
This is exactly the kind of honest, open expression about economic times that the country, especially anyone on television and writing for newspapers like the Times, is still unwilling to face. We're still living in cartoon superhero land (Hank Paulson with a cape with save us!). The tune we have been singing is "We in Denial." We have a long way to go before we reach the forthright clarity of Gold Diggers.
Unfortunately I think this article really misses the point by miles. From box office returns this fall, Americans now want escapist fantasy, just like they supposedly did during the Great Depression. This may be true about current tastes, but like most commentary about the 1930s, it gets everything utterly and completely wrong. For one thing, the 1930s were the heyday of Warner Brothers gritty, "realistic" crime dramas, like many of the movies Paul Muni made. On the whole, movies of the 1930s explicitly embraced the communal suffering of the times, and discussed it in obvious story terms even in comedies. They were, in effect, the opposite of escapism, which would have been very "unrealistic" to audiences straggling in from the streets.
The Times story mentioned, among other things, Gold Diggers of 1933, which I've discussed in my Kitty Foyle write up as one of my favorite all-time movies. Gold Diggers is certainly lightweight on the surface level, but the opening song is misunderstood today. "We're in the Money" is not a Roaring Twenties-style statement about winning the lottery and becoming suddenly privately rich. If you listen to the lyrics, it's really a rallying cry to the entire public to pick up their spirits in very dark times. The "we" of the title and chorus is actually everyone---you, me, and the guy and gal standing in the bread lines. The women of the Gold Diggers series who were seeking wealthy husbands did so because it was their only avenue to escape wretched poverty. The movies of the times pulled no punches about this reality.
This is exactly the kind of honest, open expression about economic times that the country, especially anyone on television and writing for newspapers like the Times, is still unwilling to face. We're still living in cartoon superhero land (Hank Paulson with a cape with save us!). The tune we have been singing is "We in Denial." We have a long way to go before we reach the forthright clarity of Gold Diggers.
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