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Quick Pick: Nicholson in a Forgotten Gem

2006-06-14T23:23:00.000-05:00

Thus far, Hollywood has not had much of a response to the ever-growing illegal immigration imbroglio. It is necessary to go back twenty years to Tony Richardson's The Border, a largely forgotten film starring Jack Nicholson, for an insightful look at the issue.
Nicholson plays Charlie Smith, an INS agent whose life and career have grown stagnant in Los Angeles (in the film's opening scene, he "raids" a sweatshop by telling the owner that he needs two illegals to fill his quota; the owner pulls a pair of young men off the line, tells them they have been selected for deportation but that he'll hold their jobs and pay them a better wage when they make their way back across the border). Spurred on by his vapid wife (Valerie Perrine), Charlie buys a house in El Paso and takes a job with his brother-in-law and new neighbor (Harvey Keitel) as a Border Patrolman.
He soon finds himself engaged in a war no more fulfilling or winnable than the one he left in Los Angeles--illegals are rounded up and deported only to return the next day, the arid borderland apparently unpoliceable. Charlie also becomes aware of a thriving immigrant-smuggling culture and eventually begins to dabble, unable to resist the lure of a quick buck.
This film is interesting because it addresses a far-reaching social concern, but also has an intimate eye for the small lives of its characters. Charlie becomes involved in the smuggling of illlegals because, initially, he can see no reason why not to: he is a tiny functionary in a massive beuracracy, his salary is meager, everyone else is doing it and the illegals want to be here, anyway.
He is a quiet, seemingly discontented fellow who doesn't perk up and spring to life until he gains a first-hand understanding of the dynamics of a border community, and sees how an invisible line can be used as a sinister bargaining chip, allowing the greedy few to manipulate the disenfranchised many.

Nicholson's performance is spot-on. His switchblade-grin and puckish persona are turned off here--his Charlie is a man grown tired of fumbling through an existence as vacant and aimless as the Texas prairie. And Perrine is his perfect counterpoint--consumed with creating the ideal suburban nest to please her man, she utterly embodies the well-intentioned but oblivious American consumer. Their interaction provides some of the film's best moments, and Richardson does an excellent job of creating a character-driven story within the framework of a larger issue.

The Border is not one of the great ones, and is certainly too old and obscure to have any bearing on today's affairs, but it is worth a look, not only for some excellent performances, but for an honest, human take on an issue many of us view only through the distant lens of our nightly news. A few paragraphs up, I said that this film has an eye for the small lives of its characters; it occurs to me that a life only seems small to one who is not living it, and this film is a good reminder of the danger of that kind of indifferent thinking.

Oh, and also--remember the girl from Predator ("The jungle, it came alive!")? She's in it, too.

Memorial Day Special: Why Band of Brothers is better than Saving Private Ryan

2006-05-28T23:21:00.000-05:00

Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan achieved almost instant seminal status upon its 1998 release, due largely to its raw, unprecedentedly graphic treatment of WWII combat. The opening sequence alone--a brutal depiction of the D-Day landing at Omaha Beach--was enough to knock the rose-colored glasses from America's wistful over-the-shoulder gazing at WWII and The Greatest Generation. Released after the imminent threat of the Cold War, Ryan had enough gravitas to hit home with an American public embroiled in the frivolity of the Monica Lewinsky affair but not yet blindsided by the very real drama of 9/11.
Of course, the Nazis were Indiana Jones' favorite villains, and Spielberg also gave us the war comedy 1941, as well as Empire of the Sun, about Britons in a Japanese internment camp, but Ryan was his first crack at a red-blooded, American WWII epic, and despite its foray into hard-hitting realism, the whole affair gleamed with a facilely applied, if not unexpected, sheen of Spielbergian schmaltz. A few years later he produced (along with Ryan star Tom Hanks) Band of Brothers, a ten-part miniseries for HBO, based on Stephen Ambrose's book, which hit all the marks that Ryan missed. Brothers had the paradoxical bad luck of looking, to the casual observer, like a retread of Ryan, not to mention its unfortunate release date, which came only two days before 9/11. All ten episodes of Brothers are available on DVD, and it seems to air regularly on The History Channel, as well. Unfortunately, Brothers will probably never enjoy the recognition or viewership that Ryan has, and though the comparison is somewhat unfair--Brothers has ten hours to tell its story, compared with Ryan's two and change--Brothers remains a more engaging and interesting look at WWII. Here is why:

1) Truth is more compelling than fiction

Ryan's plot is not without merit. Its cadre of wandering soldiers provide an existential conduit into the conflict-- sort of a Going After Cacciato for WWII--their trek across war-ravaged France acting as a first-person tour through the fog of war. But then, that sort of sounds like what the studio marketing people would like you to think. The problem is that after you have seen Ryan a couple of times and gotten over the initial gut-punch of the D-Day sequence, the rest of the story begins to reveal itself as forced. The script is not great, the dialogue is wooden, and the interaction between the soldiers is as stale as it was in WWII flicks twice as old. The search for Ryan eventually feels like exactly what it is: a device, bookended by two extraordinary set-pieces.

Brothers takes as its subject a real combat unit--"Easy" Company of the 506th regiment of the 101st Airborne Division--which parachuted behind enemy lines on D-Day, and was involved in major combat across Europe throughout the war, eventually liberating the Dachau concentration camp, capturing Hitler's abandoned mountain palace at Berchtesgaden, Austria and acting as an occupying army after Germany's surrender. Knowing that these events actually happened, and that the actors represent real people, makes Brothers' action that much more puissant, but equally effective use is made of its negative space. This miniseries is interested in depicting a broader spectrum of experience: the bonds that form between soldiers, the disagreements that arise between them, the adverse effects of combat, the drudgery of military life. Brothers has a huge cast (500 speaking parts; 10,000 extras), and an unforced, easy meter to it, so that the combat scenes squeeze poignancy out of the non-combat scenes and vice versa.

2) Natural vs. forced reverence

Ryan contains enough gritty ambiguities to keep it from being a completely myopic paean, but there is no mistaking it ultimate aim: from the cheesy Private Ryan-as-an-old-man framing device to the final shot of Old Glory flapping in the breeze, this flick romanticizes the warriors of the Greatest Generation just as heartily as it debunks the bloodless valor of the combat they took part in. Ryan's story cannot be content with its own resonance; it needs the eldery Ryan to implore his wife, "Tell me I've lived a good life," and it needs her to answer that, of course, he has.
Brothers, by comparison, expends the bulk of its heavy-handed sentiment in the swelling strains that play over the opening credits. Make no mistake about it: Brothers does impart a great deal of reverence for its subjects, but this is achieved largely by their honest, human portrayal. Over the course of ten episodes, you will become familiar with many members of Easy Company, and the show makes no great effort to portray all of them as saints. WWII-era America was not riven with the conflict and doubt of the Vietnam or Iraq eras, and Brothers captures that zeitgeist without overdoing it. The show offers a more effective, more even-handed, warts-and-all look at military life than Ryan does. We are shown a despotic Captain (played brilliantly against type by David Schwimmer) whose stern stewardship foments dissension in the ranks; cowardly, incompetent officers and enlisted men; disagreement and in-fighting among the soldiers; ethically questionable behavior by American soldiers, including mistreatment of German soldiers and civilians. This is not a revisionist history; it simply has a wider eye for the experience of war, and the American soldiers it portrays seem even more heroic for its honesty.

3) Dialogue: less is more

Nothing can elevate or murder a film as quickly and effectively as its writing. Dialogue is the most accessible entry point into a film's humanity, and war movies, for all their bloodletting, inevitably speak to humanity. On the most basic level, a war movie relies on the camaraderie its soldiers share, and camaraderie, at least in the movies, involves banter. Even the least formulaic of war flicks need their depictions of soldierly kinship, in part because they're realistic, in part because the audience needs to care about the characters.
This is where Ryan gets fouled up.
In fitting with what seems to be developing into a Spielbergian trend, Ryan's robust visuals are often undercut by its Dead-On-Arrival dialogue. The rapport between the principals often feels forced, concocted in order to humanize the characters, but making them appear more like constructs instead. Take Matt Damon's big monologue before the final, climatic battle, in which he recalls the antics of his brothers back home. He recounts a story involving one of his brothers trying to sleep with an ugly girl in a barn and being surprised by another brother, at which point the ugly girl's dress flies over her head and she knocks herself unconscious trying to run away. The point, I suppose, is to humanize the Ryan character with a little locker-room bawdry, but the monologue ends up feeling forced, out of place, strangely misogynistic and downright cruel. I don't mean that it makes the Ryan character seem like a cad or a jerk--which might have been sort of interesting at the very least--the story itself comes off as a weird, mean-spirited misstep. It's not that the content is offensive; I can go have that conversation with any joe I know, probably already have today, and that is why the monologue fails. It feels lazy--whip up a quick anecdote involving sex and boyish shenanigans, and presto! Now we all care about Pvt. Ryan and whether he joins his brothers or not.
Or take Hanks' dying words, imparted to Ryan: "Earn this." Seems to make sense at first. A whole squad has gone out of its way and gotten all shot up just to save this one guy. Earn it. But wait, isn't that a lot of pressure to put on a guy who is up to his neck in the carnage of the ETO and has just learned that all three of his brothers have been killed? Does "earn this" make sense, or does it just sound nifty?
Brothers keeps its dialogue simple and economical. In keeping with the overall pace of the show, it never gets bogged down in heavy-handed sentimentalizing--Brothers has the luxury of its length in this regard--it does not need to squeeze a great deal of compassion for its characters out of its audience in a short period of time. In fact, you may find that you don't have time to care too much about many of the characters--apparent principles are often killed as quickly and unexpectedly as their real-life counterparts must have been. The camaraderie these soldiers share, and the bonds that form between them, seem that much more real for their muted quality; you never lose the feeling that there is something bigger and more important happening all around them, which, of course, there is.
In the later episodes of Brothers, after Germany's surrender, I wondered if there would be some sort of closure involving the battalion commander (the closest thing this show has to a star) addressing the troops, telling them what fine men they are, how well they have served, etc. There is, but it is typical of this show's ingenuity that this address comes in the form of an American soldier's translation of a German general's address to his surrendered troops.
This scene's touching simplicity easily outdoes the obvious intent of Damon's monologue, and the muddled sentiment of Hanks' final line.

4) Better actors = better story

Those of you who have consistently read this blog know that sooner or later, I'm going to get around to the acting.
It is top-rate in Brothers, one of the show's strongest attributes. War movies don't need to rely on nuanced performances as heavily as films with more traditional, dialogue-driven scripts do, and I found myself pleasantly surprised by the fine work, across the board, by Brothers' large ensemble. This show, in fact, first caused me to get lost in the maze of imdb.com; there were so many strong performances by so many little-known actors, and I wanted to find out who these guys were. To my surprise, it turned out that several of them are actually British actors, which is an even greater credit to their performances, as their accent work is dead-on. Chief among the Brits is Damian Lewis, who plays Lt. Winters, a platoon leader who eventually ascends to batallion commander. Winters is the polar opposite of David Schwimmer's Capt. Sobel--he becomes a hero through his amazing competence in the field and his even-handed treatment of the men. Lewis' performance is superb; he finds the perfect tone of stolid determination with which to portray Winters. His is the kind of performance that guarantees continued work in Hollywood, as evidenced by his consistent appearance in movies since.
Ryan has some pretty good actors in its corner, as well--there are the usual character veterans, like Tom Sizemore, as well as the quality up-and-comers, like Adam Goldberg, Barry Pepper and Jeremy Davies. Unfortunately, Ryan's cast also contains Vin Diesel, who is usually a liability. Ed Burns is there, too--never really known what to make of that guy.
Also, one thing that Ryan does, which a lot of war movies do (usually with much bigger stars, in fairness to Ryan), is throw a bunch of recognizble faces into smaller roles--here, it's Ted Danson, Dennis Farina, Paul Giamatti, and of course, Matt Damon. War and military life seem to be experiences that consist largely of fear, confusion, anonymity, conformity; when you see familiar faces pop up among the sea of olive drab, it hinders the suspension of disbelief.
Brothers has the advantage here, not needing major star power to beef up box-office receipts. Its ensemble has a great chemistry, finding the perfect balance between creating individual characters, and immersing themselves in the uniform concert of a wartime army. The DVD extras disclose the fact that the cast went through boot camp together before filming, and it shows. This is honestly some of the best ensemble work I've recently seen, and its talented cast can take a lot of the credit for making Band of Brothers the best film (or show or miniseries or whatever) about WWII ever made. Go rent it.

Original Gangster: Pacino in Scarface and Carlito's Way

2006-05-24T02:55:00.000-05:00

Scenario:
You've got two crime flicks, released ten years apart, both centering around a Latino gangster's tragic fall, both helmed by a talented but ultimately second-tier director, and both starring the same venerable (though decidedly non-Latino) thespian whose explosive performance in each film has been the subject of praise as well as ridicule.

Question:
Is Al Pacino the savior or the ruin of both Scarface and Carlito's Way?

Well, his performances as Tony Montana and Carlito Brigante have both been derided as hammy and ostentatious, and he has been criticized for mangling each character's respective accent (Montana was a Cuban, Brigante a Puerto Rican-American).
As far as accents go, I must admit that I have never actually met anyone from Cuba, but to my untrained ear his accent in Scarface sounded pretty good, if a bit overwrought and prone to the occasional falter. As for Carlito's Way, I do know many Nuyoricans here in NYC, and I have to say that Carlito Brigante doesn't sound much like any of them. Pacino's accent here seems closer to the botched Southern one he employed in Scent Of a Woman, and on the few occasions that he actually speaks Spanish, his accent is poor to the point of being laughable. However, I suspect that Al Pacino is still more compelling when doing an accent poorly than most actors are when nailing theirs spot-on.
I know that among fellow young actors and the type of hip, post-modern film geeks who may or may not be reading this blog, it is sometimes considered cool to disparage Pacino, DeNiro, Nicholson and other actors who have arguably receded into overblown caricatures of themselves. Never mind the fact that all of these actors have reached the age at which personality traits are more or less immutable; all of these actors have also shown enough zest, originality and talent to have earned the right to cut loose. Watching actors such as these work is like reading Hemingway or listening to The Beatles--these are primary sources, the ones who set trends in motion. Robert DeNiro doesn't do Robert DeNiro; he is Robert DeNiro! Al Pacino at his Saturday Night Live parody worst can still do more with a scene just by walking into the room than Keanu Reeves can with a page of exquisitely written dialogue. So is Pacino the savior or the ruin of Scarface and Carlito's Way? What do you think? Hoo-Wah!

In the twenty-three years since its release, Scarface has become the ultimate cult classic, especially within hip-hop circles, where Tony Montana's monstrous version of the American Dream has become a brightly colored thread running through the fabric of that sub-culture. To some degree, it is hard to understand why: Scarface is, if anything, a morality play which takes as its subject a man consumed and undone by avarice, violence and treachery. But then, Scarface is a morality play in the same way that a film like Batman is--yes, those elements are present, but we go to see these movies for the fun stuff; the action, the over-the-top dialogue, the kinetic pace of the direction and, of course, the outlandish performances. Pacino is to Tony Montana what Jack Nicholson was to The Joker--proof that it sometimes takes a great actor to ham up a role perfectly.
Of course, after hearing Scarface's story invoked in countless rap songs, not to mention hearing the line "Say hello to my little friend!" quoted approximately 600 times every year, it is a bit hard to objectively critique Pacino's performance. It occurred to me that this film, is, in fact, the source material for a lot of stale, chotchy behavior--when you ask the dude in front of you in the keg line to hurry up and he says,"Hey--joo got a prah-lem, wit me, mane?" he is actually referencing Scarface and probably doesn't even know he's doing it. That's how deep this film's absurd cultural influence runs.
I do think Tony Montana (a performance in which Pacino was supposed to start out as a young punk, despite being over 40 in reality) marks the beginning of a transition from the eccentric, quietly electric Al Pacino of The Godfather, Dog Day Afternoon and Serpico, to the gravel-voiced bluster of our latter-day Michael Corleone. Pacino's work in the former titles stands as a masterful example of how a great actor channels both bombast and subtlety, understatement and showmanship, into an honest and expertly crafted performance. In Scarface, a lot of the subtlety and understatement are lacking, which is less Pacino's fault than that of director Brian DePalma. DePalma has never been a very intimate director--I find that his films often have a bubbly, cartoonish quality, and that he is more interested in representational rather than naturalistic narrative. And that's okay--sometimes you want folk music, and sometimes you want heavy metal. Pacino's demonic performance fits nicely within DePalma's larger framework, and I could imagine that, had this film had been directed by a Scorcese or a Coppola, he could have given the same performance and been just as effective, although the film itself might have been very different.
Pacino's work as Tony Montana in fact bears at least one hallmark of a truly great performance: he so thoroughly carries the film that you might not even realize what a piece of crap it could have been in the hands of a lesser actor (see Terrence Howard in last year's Hustle & Flow). Oliver Stone's dialogue is often overwrought, and his script takes easy liberties by constantly cutting and jumping forward ("Three Months Later"). And sequences such as the inspirational rock-scored montage depicting Tony and Manny's rise to power really show their seams twenty years later.
Though Scarface does suggest the manic Rottweiler persona that has come to typify his later work, one needn't look any further than the opening scene, in which the young Tony Montana is questioned by the INS, for proof of Pacino's unquestionable prowess. He has a razor-blade gleam in his eye and a shark's hungry grin. The way he deals with his two offscreen interrogators is like an Acting 101 class.
That gleam--the unquantifiable thing called charisma--is the elusive quality that elevates some performers over others, and it remains with Pacino ten years later in Carlito's Way, Scarface's spiritual descendant.
Introspective, cautious Carlito Brigante is a reformed version of Scarface's heedless, remorseless Tony Montana. Montana has a void for a soul that no amount of money or power can fill; Brigante spends the better part of Carlito's Way trying to reclaim the soul that his criminal lifestyle has corrupted.
Where Scarface shows us Tony Montana's rise from dish-scrubbing refugee to Florida cocaine czar, Carlito's Way begins on the other side of this trajectory with Brigante, a major Heroin mover, winning an appeal, being released from a lengthy prison term, and consequently vowing to go straight for good. His courtroom vow to stay out of trouble in the film's opening scene sounds forced and foolish, and at first blush, you might think Pacino has let his Pacino-ness get the better of him before the film has even started. But watch the judge's skeptical reaction: it takes a moment, perhaps even a second viewing, to realize that Carlito Brigante may be righteous, but he is also a knucklehead whose inability to stay out of trouble is his eventual undoing. One of the most telling moments in Scarface occurs when Elvira (Michelle Pfeiffer) tells Tony: "Look at us. We're not winners. We're losers." Carlito Brigante can almost be read as the realization of her diagnosis, ten years down the road.
Unfortunately, Brigante falls just short of searing himself into memory the way a truly great character does. He is tormented, sure, but also comes off as such a swell guy that you almost can't imagine him ever being a cold-hearted gangster. The sinister characters who inhabit his world push and pull at him from every angle, and he ends up seeming a helpless dupe more than a former predator fighting to reign in his bloodthirsty instincts. Also, Penelope Ann Miller, as Pacino's love interest, throws off the balance of a story otherwise propelled by outstanding performances. She is not bad, just entirely too fresh-faced and guileless to be believable as a tough-edged stripper. Michelle Pfeiffer didn't have a whole lot to do in Scarface, but her doped-out ice princess made a nice foil for Pacino's hot-blooded megalomaniac.
That said, no supporting performance in Scarface can even come close to Sean Penn's weasely turn as David Kleinfeld, Carlito's defense attorney. His descent from run-of-the-mill shyster to coked-out wannabe tough guy is superb, well worth the Oscar nod it didn't get. Carlito's Way, despite occasional character-film spasms, is a movie that paints in broad strokes, and it requires actors who are up to the task. Penn and Pacino both manage to inject a degree of humanity into their larger-than-life characters.
In fact--and maybe I'm going out on a limb here, maybe it's because Carlito's Way is the more immediate film for a person my age, but I'm going to go ahead and say I think Carlito's Way is a better film than Scarface. Carlito's Way is comfortable being more of a straight-up thriller; Scarface often vacillates between being a snappy crime flick and a clunky character study. Carlito's Way also populates its world with a flashier, more memorable gallery of characters--look out for Viggo Mortensen, who pops up in a scene that rivals the best of Goodfellas--and moves at a steadier, more even clip. I thought Scarface began to drag during its final act, whereas Carlito's Way culminates in a brilliantly staged chase sequence. For what it's worth, Carlito's Way also lets most of its Hispanic characters be played by actual Hispanics, unlike Scarface, in which Steven Bauer was the only key player of actual Cuban heritage.

What essentially unifies Scarface and Carlito's Way is what unifies nearly all gangster flicks: the depiction of an outsider's desperate struggle, wrongheaded and criminal though it may be, to realize the American Dream. We enjoy gangster sagas because of their surprising familiarity--the Corleones and the Sopranos intrigue us because they offer a slightly skewed, darker depiction of our own American hungers. Pacino's success, and his overall brilliance as a performer, owes a lot to the fact that he seems to have never lost the energy and verve of a hungry young actor.

The Passion of United 93

2006-05-05T22:44:00.000-05:00

We all remember the strange mixture of fear, horror, rage and impotent uncertainty that pervaded the country in the wake of the September 11th attacks. However, I seem to recall a slightly different strain of outrage taking hold here in New York. Of course, the tragedy had taken place in our own backyard, but there was something more, something owing to the city's character, which made that day's events all the more horrifying and incomprehensible: New York is a place famous for its toughness, its solidarity, its grandeur--New York is a place that abhors victims.
In this city, it seems that everyone, regardless of the usual limitations (class, race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.), is entitled to scrap for their piece of the pie, and everyone else is entitled to allow them their pursuit. Why visit the tragedy of September 11th on a place that embodies so much of what's good and tolerant about America? This is a place where you can believe what you want to believe, hate who you want to hate--be it America, Capitalism, the Western World in general--just let me believe what I want to believe, hate who I want to hate, and don't crowd the sidewalk while you're at it!
I will never forget the clammy, fearful confusion that touched me in the fall of 2001--why did this happen? How did this happen? What does it mean? Who is to blame? What will happen next?
I will also never forget--and am embarrassed to admit, but can't deny--the perverse thrill it all gave me, too. 9/11 was, after all, the first event of true historical significance to which I bore first-hand witness.
And it seems to me that film, or any art form that seeks to comment on actual events--be it memoir, historical novel, TV show or other--makes a concession to the exciting allure of epic events, no matter how repugnant or tragic they may have originally been. The French director Francois Truffaut famously posited that no war movie can truly be anti-war, because war movies inevitably make war look exhilirating--fun, even. Certain movies have arguably discredited this theory, and, if you consider the events of 9/11 to have been acts of war, United 93--which debuted at New York's Tribeca Film Festival--is undoubtedly one of them.
On 9/11 much of the country was held prisoner by inaction; U93 shows what may have been the only group of Americans to take decisive, visceral action that day, and it does so without much in the way of romanticization, hyperbole, or unneccessary aggrandizement. This film is a slug to the gut; a powerful revisiting of emotional territory many of us are glad to have buried under five years of hearings, wars, elections and protests. Ultimately, however, it is up to the moviegoer to decide whether he or she wishes to spend $10 for a slug to the gut and little else.
U93's director, Paul Greengrass, came onto the radar screen a few years ago with Bloody Sunday, about a peaceful protest turned infamously violent in 1972 Northern Ireland. Like Bloody Sunday, U93 is a quasi-documentary, done with complete and utter, flat-as-a-board realism. There are no name actors present, and nothing in the way of backstory or character development--we see passengers waiting to board a flight from Boston to California, nothing out of the ordinary there (except, maybe, for the 4 or 5 nervous-looking Arab men among them), Air Traffic Controllers go through the tense rigors of their work, as do the military folks at NORAD command center. And what happens, tragically, happens.
Greengrass's observational, real-time naturalism is merciless--watching, with the benefit of hindsight, as the FAA, U.S. Military, and the public-at-large (including the passsengers on Flight 93) struggle to put together the meaning behind the calamity unfolding around them is absolutely harrowing. I felt edgy, physically unwell throughout much of this film, and I noticed two people get up and leave the theater before its conclusion. Being called 'harrowing' may be a satisfactorily positive qualifier for some films--though I think U93 was done with enough skill to defy such an easy characterization, not to mention the fact that it's almost off-putting to call a film like this "good." I certainly don't think the film was bad; I just don't think I ever want to see it again, and quite frankly, if you see this as a multiple-viewing kind of movie, you might want to consider some sort of therapy. I think U93 is a far better film than The Passion of the Christ (reviewed below), but its action is often riveting in the same way that the depiction of Christ's scourging was in that movie: realistic and relentless to the point of revulsion. Of course, Passion was stilted where U93 shows little-to-no partisanship (which has the disquieting effect of making us all feel like sitting ducks), and it is U93's flat objectivity which ultimately imbues it with a wrenching poignancy.
Still, I don't think I can sign off on an exclusively positive review of a film whose most strongly felt impression is a hope to avoid ever seeing it again. It seems to me that a piece of art, no matter how gripping or intense, should at least allow for the possibility of re-exploration. I'm sure my opinion is somehwat prejudiced, and maybe I'm more lilly-livered than the average moviegoer, but I'd be content to let this one lie.
A lot has been said about the appropriateness of making this film so soon after 9/11, but I, for one, don't really consider it to be much of an issue--we live in an age of instant transmission and synthesis of information, an age in which you can watch a war unfold on TV, then watch Stephen Bocchco's T.V. dramatization of it, then go play a video game about it; an internet age in which Jihadists can turn a beheading done in a dank cellar into a public execution; an age, for that matter, (as U93 illustrates) in which CNN seemed to be the only entity that knew what the hell was going on on September 11th. Movies are going to be made with progressive quickness and abundance after calamitous events; that's just the way it is (and maybe this is not such a new phenomenon--go check out the plethora of WWII movies made while that war was still being fought).
In fact, the underlying logic behind movies like U93 is probably that they need to be made, and I tend to agree. The human trait of self-examination is necessary for our endurance; it is our ability to revisit pain and seek out catharsis that allows us to get up and face another day. I remember a scene in The Blair Witch Project (NOT REAL) in which one of the characters, enjoying a cigarette in the face of impending horror, says, "I must still be alive, 'cause I'm smoking." I suppose our ability to create tiny pleasures, even self-destructive ones--our ability to do, simply because we can--sometimes affirms our vitality. A film like U93, if nothing else, allows us to say, "We must still be alive, 'cause we're making movies."

DOH! A few Days late!

2006-04-27T18:05:00.000-05:00

Disclaimer: I started this piece over a week ago, but I was busy and had to put off finishing it. Now the film in question has stopped its run at Film Forum--let this be a lesson in procrastination for all of you. In order to approximate the effect of seeing Days Of Heaven in a theater, I suggest the following: go buy the biggest screen TV available, a really top-flight sound system, pop some poppin' corn, put in the DVD and turn out the lights. Barring that, I don't know what to say, except: sorry. I'll do better next time.

Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven is a piece of visual poetry--beautiful, sumptuous and worth experiencing--though, like a heady poem, it can sometimes be a bit of a drag to get through. It is now playing at Film Forum on Houston Street (sorry non-NYC readers!), and if you have only seen this flick on DVD or video and have an interest in seeing it in its purest form (or are old enough to have seen it the first time around and want to refresh your impressions of it), get on over to Film Forum and check it out--it's worth the price of admission, which is more than I can say for a lot of movies these days (And I guess it's too bad that the cost of going to the movies is so exorbitant as to play a determining role in a film's overall quality, but what can you do?).
I know some film wonks consider DOH to be the most beautiful film ever shot, and it would be hard, even with my limited knowledge, to throw up much in the way of protest. After seeing The New World (reviewed in March archives) and now Days of Heaven on the big screen in the past month, I can definitely say that Terrence Malick is not really messing around when it comes to creating pretty pictures.
DOH, acccording to lore, was shot exclusively during the "magic hour" (which actually refers to two different hours--the one just after dawn, and the one just before dusk, respectively) and almost every scene is soaked in the gauzy, ethereal glow of a day's waning and waking moments. As always, Malick spends a good deal of time lingering over the beauty of the natural landscape--in this case, the vast plains and wheat fields of Texas, alternately depicted as a desolate moonscape and a golden, teeming paradise. This duality of character is a perfect corollary to the film's story, which quietly observes the way in which human emotions can transmute and turn, how the stark beauty of daytime can fade into the uncertain glow of twilight.
Richard Gere and Brooke Adams play a pair of ragamuffin lovers who, along with Gere's young sister, flee WWI-era Chicago after Gere attacks and kills his smelting-plant foreman. They find itinerant work harvesting wheat on a prosperous widower's (Sam Shepherd) sprawling Texas farm, and, at the outset, Adams and Gere decide to pass themselves off as brother and sister. Later, when Gere catches wind of Shepherd's affliction with a terminal illness, he orchestrates a courtship and eventual marriage between Adams and him, the idea being that when the farmer kicks off, Gere's hardscrabble trio will inherit his land and wealth. I have to say, this seemed like a pretty boneheaded idea from the get-go, and its eventual payoff doesn't do much to dispel that instinct. Things are good at first--the group's ascension from abject poverty to a life of leisure encompasses the title's "days of heaven," but Shepherd stubbornly refuses to die, and, to make matters worse, Adams soon finds herself falling for him: he is gentle, kind, deeply in love with her, and he does happen to be Sam Shepherd, which means he's a pretty cool mofo, to boot. He has suspicions about Adams and Gere's relationship, however, things begin to sour, and Gere eventually gains the good sense to hit the road, leaving his sister, Adams and Shepherd behind to form some approximation of a normal family. This is not the last we see of Gere, however: his final return sets off a cataclysmic chain of events, leading to a final, quiet closure that could almost be described as a happy ending.
DOH, like The New World and The Thin Red Line (and maybe Badlands--never seen it), is largely guided by voice-over narration, provided here by Gere's spunky young sister. The film closes on a note of hope as far as she is concerned--a note that, in some ways, changes the entire context of the preceding movie. She is the film's narrator, but it wasn't until the last shot that I decided that DOH, more than being Adams' or Gere's or Shepherd's, is really her story instead. Sometimes a child's world is only as big as the larger human beings who surround them, and if the action of the three principles often seems distant, caught in fleeting, fractured glimpses, it may be a matter of perspective.
Of course, presenting a diffuse, three-hundred-and-sixty-degree narrative is a hallmark of Terrence Malick's work; in DOH, as in The New World and The Thin Red Line, we can never be sure if we are seeing the story through the eyes of one of its characters or through the eyes of some hovering, unnamed presence--God himself, perhaps. His execution is as virtuosic as ever, but the final result is still somewhat difficult to contend with.
And this, I think, is why:
The basic joy I derive from watching movies, more than anything else, is watching the actors, and--when there's a good script involved--observing the way the acting and the writing begin to dance.
And, to some extent, a film like DOH stymies me.
Its cast is first rate, and good performances are given throughout, but you almost feel as though the performers themselves are incidental.
I have grown up on the hyper-locquacious films of Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, Richard Linklater, et al., in which dialogue is the brush that paints each story's action. But Malick works from a very different palate, creating a vast tableau, absent the sort of verbal repartee that forces you to laser in on every scene. The constant progression of life is a truth that seems to underlie Malick's work, and his most basic message, as I have taken it in the three films that I have seen, is this: the world is a big place. A lot of things are happening in it, many of them beautiful, many of them sinister and cruel; I will show you some of them, and I will do it in a deft and interesting manner.
It is done interestingly, and with unassailable technical skill--in this regard, Malick seems a sage old man next to the snappy, youthful earnestness of any of the directors mentioned above--and, to be honest, exposure to this level of mastery is not a whole lot more than I can ask from a movie.
This film also predates the video and DVD era, and demands to inhabit the grandeur of a real-life movie theater. It is not a Swiss Army Movie that can function as theatrical experience as well as home entertainment--it does not apologize for being what it is any more than a live play should desire to be digitally recorded, slapped on to DVD and shipped en masse to Blockbuster. If nothing else, that's something of an anomlay in our everything-in-one, Blackberry, IPod, Camera Phone culture.
See what just happened?
That's why Terrence Malick is good.
Without even meaning to, here I am, using his film as a springboard into philosophical musings about the technological asphyxiation of American culure.
But, speaking of American culture, I'll tell you something else--DOH, while not perfect, and guilty of a sort of washed-out mooniness, is, at its heart, a movie about America. And being a freedom-lover, I like things about America.
If you have ever been to DOH's Texas locale, you know that it is a place whose vast, empty sky can illuminate as well as oppress--and that Texas nights can take on a fearful, crystalline stillness in which the chemistry of love and hate seems to float like a strange pollen. America is a place whose legacy is connected to the land, the soil itself, and DOH does capture the way a place can insinuate itself into your heart, and maybe, if only briefly, feel like heaven.

Two For One: "Trapped in the Closet" and "The Constant Gardener"

2006-04-21T15:11:00.000-05:00

I have had complaints about my verbosity, which I'll admit, can sometimes run a little wild. In an effort to be more economical, today I am offering two DVD critiques for the price-- and space--of one.

[Lengthy parenthetical aside deleted HERE]

The two DVDs share almost no similarities, other than the fact that I happened to watch them both this week. Actually, the first of the two, R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet, is such a rarity that I couldn't imagine where to find a point of reference by which to define it. It's not really a movie, not really a music video. Not a musical, not a straight film, either. More than anything, it's really freakin' weird. And I mean that in a good way.

R. Kelly has had a long, very successful and progressively eccentric career as an R&B singer. He is the Terrell Owens of his field--not as brash or abrasive as Owens, but every bit as exquisite a flake (Owens stages elaborate touchdown celebrations during games, Kelly has been known to stage sexual encounters with female fans during concerts, not to mention the infamous and decidedly unstaged home video that was hilariously parodied--several times--by Dave Chapelle). Indeed, Closet almost gives the impression of a madman's imaginings as translated to DVD. That sounds like a description of a horror movie, which Closet certainly isn't--its tone is never dark or invasive, but cartoonish instead, ebullient and silly--it's just hard to say exactly what it is. It is not a movie--there is not much character development, no real plot, and what's more, no dialogue--every line is sung. And not by the actors, but by Kelly himself. The actors lip synch their lines to correspond with Kelly's singing.
This might make it sound like a musical, but it's not that, either. Mainly because there is only one song performed throughout. No kidding--one song with the same melody and backing is used to narrate the entire story.
Closet most closely resembles a feature length music video, and I believe it has been released in serial form as both song and video (the DVD being reviewed here is, in fact, touted as "Chapters 1-12") This approach is novel and interesting, but to call Closet overwrought, or just plain silly, would be a profound understatement. The narrative follows a group of unfaithful lovers, and without giving away any details, let me assure you that just about every second of this story bursts with absurdity. You will hit the rewind button, and not only to replay a plethora of unintentionally hilarious scenes, but because so much of Closet is just so bizarre that you will have to see it a second (or third or fourth) time to believe it.
I would not exactly call this work groundbreaking, but it does manage to expand on a lot of music video conventions, and the bottom line is that Kelly can sing. In the hands of a less unique talent, Closet would be ridiculously unwatchable; in Kelly's hands it is ridiculous, but in an endearing way, far from unwatchable.
Also, aside from playing one of the leads, Kelly acts as ringmaster, prowling the periphery, stogie in hand, like a cross between Rod Serling and the Cheshire Cat. His confident, unaplogetic earnestness is what ultimately makes Closet enjoyable--this is a trifle, but a light-hearted and humorous one that conveys some semblance of a story--and Kelly's longevity seems a testament to the value of sticking to one's own bizzarro sensibilities.

The Constant Gardener, based on John LeCarre's novel, attempts a dialogue with much larger concerns, though its storyline also involves a magnetic personality, possessed of a headstrong vision, who refuses to change for anyone. Here, however, the results are tragic, rather than amusing.
Rachel Weisz turns in an excellent (and Oscar-winning) peformance as Tessa, an idealistic British healthcare activist who follows her fuddy-duddy diplomat husband Justin (Ralph Fiennes) to Africa, where he plays a functionary role as attache to a pharmaceutical company developing an AIDS medication. We learn, in the film's opening passages, that she has been murdered, and the narrative dances in and out of establishing her relationship with Justin, her immersion in a myopic, life-endangering level of activism, and Justin's subsequent pursuit of the truth behind her death. Because TCG is based on a John LeCarre novel, and because an institutional villain like Big Pharmaceuticals is present, we can be certain that sinister motives lurk behind Tessa's murder, but this is, by no means, a standard corporate conspiracy flick.
As directed by Fernando Mereilles (he of the savage and beautiful City of God), TCG is a tender examining of the vulnerability and hurtfulness that exists on the underside of a relationship, as well as an outraged elegy sung for a part of the world edging ever nearer to collective death. It largely transcends genre cliches in its illustration of a systemized malfeasance by which no one is guilty but everyone has blood on their hands.
Justin and Tessa have a fairly standard meet-cute--he is a substitue professor teaching a graduate-level class on diplomacy, she is the fiesty upstart whose altruistic rantings bore her classmates but fascinate her teacher. Pretty soon, they are falling in love, and Mereilles touches these scenes with a diaphanous beauty, though our foreknowledge of Tessa's fate adds another, sadder dimension. Love can inspire vulnerability and fear as well as joy: having found your counterpart, the far-off terror of their harm also materializes, and I like the way Mereilles uses the darker implications of Justin and Tessa's relationship as a way into the larger story.
It turns out that maybe the two don't know each other so well after all--he is content with a life of domesticity, tending his garden and maintaining an intellectual, if cursory interest in the plight of the Third World. But Tessa is no arm-chair activist: she has grander, shrouded designs that alienate her from her husband and call her motives into question.
Weisz is perfectly cast as Tessa: both luminously beautiful and witheringly shrewd, she manipulates her male compatriots for what seem like altruistic ends, though the narrative's diffuse nature often leaves us unsure as to whether she is the heroine or the villain.
The ever-excellent Ralph Fiennes also hits the right notes as a typically prim and stoic Englishman whose buttoned-down demeanor hides reserves of tenacity. He does not, however, morph into an avenging Superman, as he might have done in a sillier film. As Justin pieces together the truth behind his wife's murder, his resolve to do the right thing becomes a slow, cool certainty.
TCG's weight owes a lot to the talents of its two stars. There is something special about watching really good British actors. They seem to have a comfort (perhaps owing to their 1,000-year headstart) with the language that American actors lack; British actors don't seem to retreat into themselves and apologize for saying their lines the way American actors sometimes do.
TCG also populates its world with fine supporting players who bring balance to their characters, and though it eventually becomes a little hard to keep track of roles and plot threads, this is a well-told story, and germane to the pressing concerns of a global economy.
I guess the only nagging hang-up I have is that it is yet another story about impoverished people of color that needs be seen through the eyes of prosperous whites. Only after the white, Western protagonist of this film suffers a personal tragedy does he begin to understand a part of the world that exists in an almost perpetually tragic state. But then, I guess that's sort of the point.

Easter Special: Gibson's Passion For Blood

2006-04-16T23:01:00.000-05:00

I can't--and shouldn't-- really comment as to what extent movies act as a reflection of American culture at large, but it seems fitting that The Passion Of The Christ was the biggest movie of 2004, a year in which the Democratic Party, and liberalism in general, received one of its swiftest ass-kickings in recent memory.
It was a tough year, what with Bush's re-election, its implicit validation of the Christian fundamentalist fringe, the deepened cultural rift between "red" and "blue" America.
But liberals, take heart: if movies DO indicate which way our cultural winds are blowing, 2005 was a big step forward: it was, of course, the year of Brokeback Mountain (reviewed below). Bush may still be in office, the war in Iraq may still be slogging along, certain school districts in this country may have mandated the teaching of "intelligent design," but now we've got gay cowboys, and we're not afraid to use 'em.
Don't worry--I have no intention of comparing these two movies, except to say that I approached both with the same degree of skepticism and apprehension. When a movie is incessantly hyped, I usually bestow the burden of proof upon it--I will admit that oftentimes, I want to dislike the big, talked-about movies, and oftentimes, happily, I find that these movies oblige me by sucking horribly, as in the case of Crash (reviewed in March archives).
Brokeback Mountain, on the other hand, had the opposite effect on me: as much as I wanted to see through it, I was defied by the beauty and skill with which it was executed. This was an extremely well-told story; well-directed, well-written, and well-acted, which, in the end, is what I think makes a good movie. I enjoy seeing a movie whose structural elements all perform their duties with skill and intelligence; I have said repeatedly that a movie's "message" doesn't matter a bit to me if its delivery does not, primarily, break down to interesting scenes, the same way a novel's ostensible theme becomes irrelevant if the individual sentences are poorly written.
This is why I disliked Crash, and why, for the most part, I didn't like The Passion Of The Christ. I say, "for the most part," because I think this flick plays a little trick on the viewer that makes it impossible to completely disengage oneself.
As you have probably heard, this is an incredibly bloody and violent film and I must give it credit, at least, for pulling no punches as far as its title is concerned--in its archaic form, "passion" refers to the various abuses and degradations Christ was forced to suffer en route to his eventual crucifixion: his condemnation at the hands of Pontius Pilate, scourging by way of cat o’ nine tails, being made to wear the crown of thorns, carrying the cross, etc. In Catholic doctrine, these are referred to as the Stations of the Cross, each Station having an accompanying prayer or meditation. This film is essentially a literal and very graphic enactment of the Stations of the Cross. It reaches its gory crescendo during the crucifixion scene, but I’d like to come back to that later. Rest assured that there is plenty of violent imagery during the lead-up--we are shown Jesus (Jim Caviezel) being beaten mercilessly, whipped until he is practically hamburger meat, staggering beneath the weight of the massive cross, and on and on and on, all of it depicted in excruciating, agonizing detail.
As such, it is impossible not to feel some emotional pull during this film. I was reminded of my friend Dan’s austere but incisive assessment of Passion when it came out two years ago: "You’re basically just watching this guy take a freakin’ beating for two hours." (Imagine this statement as delivered by a strapping Boston guy with thick accent, and it’s even funnier) To a degree, this statement sums up the film, and unless you are a psychopath, you will feel certain emotions evoked, but I’ll wager that they will share the same general tenor: revulsion, horror, shock, pity. Valid emotions, all, but they do not a complete story make.

Long before the movies and Mel Gibson, Passion Plays performed by traveling troupes were the big theatrical draw of the entertainment-starved Middle Ages. However, this particular Passion Play seems to have its roots in the early 20th century, specifically drawing from Artaud's Theater of Cruelty. I found myself wondering: "What did I do to deserve to be subjected to this horror?" I was also reminded of certain images I once saw on the news showing Catholic zealots in the Phillipines literally crucifying themselves as part of their Good Friday worship. Didn’t Christ go through this so that we don’t have to? And who is Mel Gibson, he of countless vapid, mindlessly violent films, to foist this bloodbath on me and tell me it is somehow more important than all the stupid bloodletting in say, the Lethal Weapon franchise?
I guess, though I don’t really know why, it is worth saying that I am a baptized Christian, albeit one who used to hide under his bed when his mother would come get him for Sunday School. And my enthusiasm for church, and religion in general, hasn’t improved much since. An artist’s--or arts enthusiast’s--temple is the stage or the cinema, the studio or the writing desk. The closest thing to a religious experience that I am apt to have is in the reading of a brilliant novel, or seeing an actor pull off an excellent performance. In a piece of art, we want to see a story, because the telling of a story is one of the most sacred and primal of human undertakings. A truthful story is as luminous and reverent as a hymn.
And the Bible, like it or not, tells one heck of a story.
I think the story of Christ’s Passion is actually quite brilliant, and one of this film’s biggest failings is that it fails to translate the story’s astonishing and transcendent universality.
In the intervening 2000 years or so since Christ’s death, countless humans have been subjected to equal and greater bouts of humiliation and torture. In the past week alone, I’m sure such brutality has occurred over and again in places like Iraq and Darfur. Like almost every story in the Bible, the Passion’s brilliance lies in its astounding allegorical weight: He was made man. He was crucified under Pontius Pilate, suffered and was buried. On the third day, he rose again. This is how much God loves us. It is the Rosetta Stone for every story about sacrifice, suffering, redemption and love we have. Gibson takes this beautiful parable and turns it into a bloodbath, and I wonder: what is it all meant to accomplish? Forget the fact that the better part of the world is familiar with this story--obviously Gibson felt it necessary to depict the nature of Christ’s suffering in a real and visceral manner. But I wonder, would you like to see a film about 9/11 that showcases, in graphic detail, the victims being burned alive, plummeting to their deaths, being suffocated beneath piles of rubble? Would that honor anyone? Or, for a closer analogy: take Immette St. Guillen, the young woman atrociously kidnapped, sexually assaulted and murdered here in New York a few weeks ago. Would she be honored or memorialized by a film that offers a literal depiction of those events?

I cannot stress enough how exacting and brutal this film is. However, I grew up on Stallone, Schwarzenegger AND GIBSON, and consider myself to be more or less inured to violence in the movies. It is not only the blood itself (though there is plenty of that) which repulses, but the way the film seems to revel in its shedding. In my notes about the crucifixion scene, I wrote, "Gibson should be ashamed of himself." A bit grandmotherly, I’ll admit, but notice the perverse patience he exhibits in drawing the scene out, lingering over every gruesome second, heaping one horror on top of the next--the stilted, voyueristic detail with which the act is rendered borders on the pornographic. Gibson would probably argue that the film is meant to be excruciating in the same way that my Sunday School teacher used to tell me that kneeling is supposed to be uncomfortable: it is an act of contrition. However, Mel Gibson is neither priest nor savior, he is a Hollywood flake and I don’t need him to be exacting a penance from me. If you wanted to teach me something, Mel, why did the Last Supper, and the teachings of love Jesus imaprted there, take such a distant backseat to all the boring Hollywood brutality?
Passion reminded me of an ultra-violent version of one of those Biblical movies you may have seen if you've ever stumbled onto one of those Christian channels at the upper reaches of the cable spectrum (or maybe not–maybe I’m the only one who does weird stuff like that). Its utter partisanship is what keeps it from being interesting. Note the dramatic slo-mo shot of Caiaphas tossing Judas the pouch containing his 30 pieces of silver. It’s like a parody of something worked out during a producers' meeting at The Ivy.
There were allegations of anti-Semitism bandied about when Passion was released, and I can see why they existed. The Pharisees (the high Jewish priests who condemned Jesus), as presented here, are vindictive and blood-hungry, however I would say that their depiction is less anti-Semitic than anti-intellectual. They stand around pointing fingers and snarling for blood, never developing beyond rote plot constructs. If there is anti-Semitism present, it is in Gibson's presentation of the Romans as the Pharisees’ fair and equanimous opposites. Caiaphas scuttles around with the other Pharisees calling for crucifixion, but we see poor Pontius Pilate, tormented, in consult with his wife about how to deal with the young upstart everyone wants to execute.
In the end, I don’t think there was a great deal of anti-Semitism present here; Passion's over-riding offense (other than its relentless gore) is its lack of interest in creating an interesting story. Have you ever seen a movie remade (perhaps this summer’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?) and thought, "Okay, that was pretty good, but why’d they need to remake it? It didn’t re-invent or expand upon the original." That’s sort of how I felt about Passion. And of course, I was unable to avoid thinking of Martin Scorcese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, an earlier, though similarly maligned and controversial film.
I wish Temptation were more immediate in my memory, so I could draw some real parallels between the two films. I am sure that it is the superior film, not only because it featured Willem Dafoe and Harvey Kietel, two of the best actors we have, or because Martin Scorcese could sneeze a better film on his worst day than Mel Gibson could direct on his best. I think Temptation was better because Scorcese, a Catholic who considered the seminary before becoming a director (not to mention Nikos Kazantakis, the book’s author), is interested in exploring the story of Jesus at ground level. In Temptation, Jesus is a mortal man who is often racked by fear and an inability to understand why he carries such a special burden. He is also a religious radical, leading a fringe rabble. He is loving but mercurial, and his adjustment to power is often awkward. When he is finally crucified and beseeches God, "Father, why have you forsaken me?" we are given a lengthy interlude showing Jesus leading a normal, mortal life, happily married to Mary Magdalene (this also featured the absurdly decried scene of Jesus and Mary Magdalene in bed together, which was brief, discreet and uterly innocuous). Only later do we understand that this vison is the titular final temptation, sent by Satan to provoke Jesus into renouncing God. He does not, and he ascends to heaven, where he is seated at the right hand of the Father.
In Passion, Jesus asks God the same question...nothing happens...a few seconds pass...he says, "It is accomplished. I commend myself unto you." Isn’t Jesus’ fleeting notion that God has abandoned him rather crucial to his endurance and eventual triumph over doubt and fear? Passion doesn’t ask these questions. Instead, the heavens move, and we see the Pharisees’ temple crumbling, in a scene that reminded me of the climactic end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I almost expected to see Harrison Ford come sprinting out of there with the Holy Grail in his hand.
I suppose it is a sad but predictable irony that The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson's nobly intended labor of love, ends up resembling nothing so much as another violent, mindless Hollywood machine.
Jesus, as you probably know, referred to himself as "the good shepherd," and Gibson, who probably had a nearly limitless budget in making this film, is guided by no counsel other than his own predilictions as a filmmaker and man of faith. Unfortunately, when it comes to being told a story, I, for one, prefer to be guided by a shepherd rather than a sheep.

Love, Out Of Context: "Brokeback Mountain"

2006-04-12T18:55:00.000-05:00

Okay. I was going to begin this review with a whole cutesy, hyperbolic thing about being a straight man renting "the gay cowboy movie" and how I felt a little shock of embarrassment and defensiveness in front of the male video clerk and it was all going to be humorous, irreverant and very un-pc. The problem is that, though it might make for a funny intro, it's not true. Not in the least. I live in New York City, and find the idea of a movie about gay cowboys to be stupendously mundane. I realize that this is not necessarily the case for people who live in less tolerant/decadent (depending on how you look at it) places, but I do happen to live here, and as such, I have been privy to the spectacle of men in leather and cowboy hats making out long before anyone decided to turn it into a movie with Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.
Of course, that is a gross and borderline offensive over-simplification of Brokeback Mountain, and if that's all one cares to reduce this film to, one might save the rental fee and simply take a stroll up Eighth Avenue on a Saturday night.
The truth is, I did feel a great deal of trepidation about watching this flick, and it had nothing to do with its subject matter. Unless you have been living under a rock for the past eight months or so, you know that Brokeback has, for better or worse, blazed its way across America's cultural consciousness, either as a spectacular novelty ("Gay cowboys?") or as a harbinger of doom ("Gay cowboys!"), depending on whose opinion you listen to. As such, I had doubts about my ability to watch, let alone critique, this film independent of the incessant commentary that has accompanied it. I assumed that a post factum review of this flick would have to be about context--I felt sure that this movie, no matter how good, could not withstand an objective viewing after all the hoopla of recent months.
I was wrong. I don't know if Brokeback Mountain was the best American movie of the year (though it was certainly better than the abomination that was Crash), but I thought it was extremely well done and more than held its own as a masterfully told story, nevermind all the cultural baggage with which it will forever be saddled (no pun intended).
What's more, I think that Brokeback Mountain's story is potent enough to transcend the fact that it revolves around a homosexual affair. This story could have been about any coupling of human beings, and furthermore, despite the film's tagline--"Love is a force of nature"--as well as the undoubtedly ubiquitous critical assertion that this film was about things like "unbridled passion" or "forbidden romance", I'm not even sure that Brokeback Mountain's purest distillation is that of love story.
You probably have an idea of what the movie is about--Ledger and Gyllenhaal play two young cowhands hired to spend a summer on the titular peak tending a wealthy rancher's (Randy Quaid--underused, though awesome as usual) flock of sheep. They end up tending to each other more than the sheep and an unallowable relationship begins to develop between them. When the summer is over, they part ways, each man eventually marrying and raising a family, though their affair continues, on a back-burner basis, for years to come. This is a very sad film, and though there is tragedy present in the relationship that is never allowed to fully bloom, I found just as much sadness in the way that both men seem to end up as prisoners of their own lives. Brokeback Mountain was based on a short story by Annie Proulx, whom I have never read, but the traces of short fiction are all over this film--each man's life eventually becomes a quiet catastrophe, and the tragedy of having lived the wrong life is as compelling and universal as the tragedy of having loved a person of the wrong gender. That's not to say that the love these two men share is incidental or inconsequential; it is not, but so much has been made of the man-on-man action in Brokeback Mountain that one would think that is all the story is about. Like most good stories, Brokeback Mountain is about more than its ostensibe plot. Jack Twist (Gyllenhaal) and Ennis Del Mar (Ledger) love each other but cannot build a life together; in this context, their relationship is stymied not only by the strictures of their masculine community and culture, but because at least one of them (Ledger) can never let himself cross a certain internal line. I imagine that relationships--gay, straight and otherwise--are thwarted in this manner every day and it is a testament to the strength of Brokeback's acting, writing and directing that its allegorical poignancy outweighs the novelty of its plot.
I initially found Gyllenhaal's performance to be a bit problematic. He seems to be in the throes of transforming into a leading man--as evidenced by his taking on more "manly" roles such as the one he played in Jarhead (reviewed below)--and at first blush, he seemed too soft to be believable as the would-be rodeo cowboy he plays in Brokeback. I guess Gyllenhaal is considered to be something of a heartthrob, but his essence as an actor seems closer to that of Matthew Broderick than that of Matthew McConnaughey. However, his performance gels perfectly with the film's narrative progression as it becomes apparent that Twist is a full-on closeted homosexual who goes on to have dalliances with other men, including the husband of one of his wife's friends. Twist's wife (Anne Hathaway) is the daughter of a proseperous purveyor of farm machinery, and though he is able to essay the marriage into a lucrative sales career, he can never really hide his secret and becomes a perpetual milqetoast in the eyes of his domineering, good old boy father-in-law.
Jack Twist is the inverse of Ennis Del Mar, who not only seems to not really be gay, but never seems to have another meaningful relationship again after his marriage collpases due to his affair with Jack. Ledger's performance is withdrawn and taciturn; he speaks in a clipped grumble and his eyes constantly search outward, avoiding the person to whom he is speaking. Like a beaten dog, he is both pathetically subdued and aggressively alert. If you buy into the Romantic's notion that everyone has one person out there waiting for them, Ennis Del Mar seems that much more tragic--he is a man broken by the fact that, for him, that person happens to be another man. After their first sexual encounter, Ennis, not surprisingly, tells Jack, "You know I ain't no queer." As the story progresses we are able to believe this assertion, or at least understand that coming out of the closet can never be an option--not only because of the mores of a frontier society, but because of his own ideas about who he is and should be.
Although Phillip Seymour Hoffman won the Best Actor Oscar for Capote (reviewed below), Ledger's performance in Brokeback received equal, if not greater notice, and I have to say: he deserved it. I've never really liked Heath Ledger very much (as an actor--I'm sure he's a great guy)--until now, he seemed like the prototypical male ingenue who is foisted on the public as a legit leading man despite never having really given much of a performance in any kind of decent movie (well, I guess he was good for the two seconds he was in the over-rated Monster's Ball, but that's about it). I don't know if his work in Brokeback is an indicator of things to come, but he shouldered a lot of the burden in telling this story--which can be a test of an actor's mettle--and he pulled it off aptly. I'm not exactly sure what made Ledger's performance so affecting, other than the fact that he dared to dip his toe into the waters of creating a real character--in this case, a sort of lumbering shell-shock case--while also maintaining an incisive and honest pitch throughout. His performance is a desperate implosion; Ennis Del Mar's eventual ruin is as much a result of the things he has done as the things he has not done and will never allow himself to do.

I can imagine that Brokeback Mountain's detractors will probably see Ledger's character as an easy Marlboro Man stereotype, and will probably view the whole film as a cop-out that relies too heavily on compact, subtextual, "frontiersy" sounding dialogue, such as the already famous and eminently make-fun-of-able, "I wish I knew how to quit you." There would be some truth to this assessment, but I think any story that has guts and refuses to maintan a tone of ceaseless self-awareness is an easy target. Earnestness, in too heavy a dose, is sickening, but without a little of it, it's hard to tell an affecting story (look at the work of Wes Anderson: his Rushmore has to have the most disproportionate ratio of poignancy to earnestness in any recent film, but each of his succesive outings has receded further and further into a cartoony, sterile and unmoving preciousness).
It's no secret that the American West, as it's usually portrayed in books, movies and plays, is a hard, stolid culture in which people are economical with their speech, relying on implication, and the value of what's left unsaid in order to make a point. As such, it's an easy culture to caricature and misrepresent, but when it's done well, this kind of dialogue rings with a sad, simple honesty, and the weight of things unspoken can linger like a prairie ghost.
Screenwriters Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana bring their considerable talents to bear in this regard: their script is intelligent and well-paced; their dialogue judicious but not opaque, and only occassionally overwrought. And their work is complimented by director Ang Lee's elemental, even-handed direction.
The only other Ang Lee film I have seen is The Ice Storm, which also had a strong script in its corner, and, like Brokeback Mountain, unfolded slowly and flatly, the evenness of its pace eventually becoming a scalpel that cuts the story open and reveals the tragedy within (Okay--I also saw Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but all I remember of that flick is people flying around and some pretty cool swordplay. Sorry). I think Lee did a fine job with Brokeback Mountain--this story is, to an extent, about love as addiction, and he seems to combine all the script's subtext and empty spaces into a slowly simmering chemical reaction, with each brief vignette catalyzing the next, until a transformation takes place and a poignant and honestly told story emerges.
By that point, you might even find that you've forgotten it's a story about gay cowboys.

Bringing Out The Dead: "Capote" on DVD

2006-04-06T18:38:00.000-05:00

Let me preface my review of Capote by saying that I put this disc in the DVD player having little to no familiarity with Truman Capote as a writer or personality. I have never read any of his books, I have not even seen Breakfast at Tiffany's, I have never seen a recorded appearance of Capote's, nor heard an audio recording of an interview or reading. In about the ninth grade, I had to read To Kill A Mockingbird for English class, and I remember a classmate telling me that the character of Dill was based on Truman Capote, Harper Lee's childhood friend. I didn't really know who Capote was then, and I never learned much else about him. I guess it's a blind spot in what I generally consider to be an at least adequate store of American cultural knowledge. However, since I have tried to avoid reading other critics before writing my reviews, so as not to color my impressions, maybe it was good that I had no real preconceptions regarding Truman Capote before seeing a film about him. Rather than comparing the film's events and Phillip Seymour Hoffman's performance against some mental template of actual truth, I was able to view the story and its tellers--Hoffman, director Bennet Miller, writer Dan Futterman--with some degree of objectivity. In my last review--of Jarhead--I found my impressions of the book to be inseperable from my impressions of the film. I enjoyed Capote; well, no, I didn't really "enjoy" it, per se--this is a rather dark and tortured story--but I thought it was well done. However, if anyone thinks that my critique suffers due to a lack of awareness regarding Truman Capote and his work, please feel free to comment.

The first thing I noticed about Capote was its score. The signature strain is a maudlin, elegiac tinkling of piano keys which sounded, to my untrained ear, like a pretty close facsimile of the theme from HBO's "Six Feet Under," a similarly downbeat story that involves people profiting from death (if any of you know anything about music, tell me: am I wrong here?).
In the opening scene, a young girl makes a gruesome discovery in a house somewhere in the heartland. Cut to a boho gathering in New York City, where Truman Capote, cocktail in hand, holds court with a humorous discussion of James Baldwin's new novel-in-progress. "I told him: be honest about why you're writing it," Capote quips. Director Bennett Miller provides the slightest suggestion that this is also an admonition for Capote, who will soon start his work on In Cold Blood. The film moves pretty quickly into Capote's interest in that book's eventual subject matter--the story of a family murdered in small-town Kansas--and in the course of detailing the murders and their aftermath, Capote will befriend Perry Smith, one of two men convicted of the atrocity. He will also, over the course of their four-year relationship, lie to and manipulate Smith, giving him false hope about an appeal as well as misleading him about the book's content and progress before eventually abandoning him. One thing I liked about this film is that it doesn't really comment on whether Capote should be condemned for not being completely straightforward with a man who brutally murdered an entire family. Maybe such a person forfeits some of his right to fair emotional treatment, maybe not. Lying can sometimes be one of the most desperate and abhorrent of human actions because, in order to effectively lie to someone else, one must also lie to oneself on a certain level. Manipulating another means condoning the manipulator in yourself. Capote is as much about the emptiness of living in this moral grey zone as it is about one person doing an injustice to another.

The back of the DVD box, which can always be counted on for an oversimplification of the film contained therein, says that after his involvment with Smith, Capote is "changed forever." I disagree. As much as I want to say that this is a story about a writer losing his soul, it almost seems that Hoffman's version of Capote never had a soul to begin with. He is garrulous, charming, incredibly observant and intelligent, but also insecure and utterly selfish. It seems a strange irony that the artists with the keenest eyes for human behavior often lack any discernible human traits themselves. Hoffman's Capote is a sort of diabolical Baby Huey, and we can see how quickly he sloughs off the impulse to do the right thing when it jeopardizes the completion of his book. Watch how smoothly he insinuates himself into the lives of the townspeople (including that of Chris Cooper, who plays a Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent in another fine performance): they understand that he is essentially self-serving, but also that he is a brilliant writer with a real yen to tell their story truthfully. There is a scene in which Cooper expresses reluctance to offer Capote (and his travelling companion, Harper Lee, played by Catherine Keener) certain details about the killings, and is admonished by his wife: "Come on, Alvin, these are good people." We wonder: are they? And even if the answer is no, does it preclude them from telling this story?

This is the fundamental relationship that Truman Capote forms with almost everyone he meets in this film: that of chronicler and chronicled. Does this relationship always equate to an eventual betrayal? The film asks this question but doesn't necessarily answer it. Futterman--or perhaps Gerald Clarke, who wrote the book that is the film's basis--understands that the question of an artist's responsibility to his subject, or, more generally, a truth-seeker's responsibility to the peripherals who guide him on his search, is dicey and ambiguous. What role does deceit play in an excavation of events ultimately leading to the truth? Is the truth cheapened if delivered by a cad?
Capote never really answers these questions, but suggests that the inhabitants of such situations are not very happy people. The film unfolds slowly and flatly, eventually growing into a grim dirge imbued with the time-frozen sadness of a still-life.

(I also want to say that though I have never read In Cold Blood, I have been aware of its subject matter for some time. I think that killings like these occupy a special place in the American psyche, and if you have ever been out west, you might have some idea why: with its massive, looming sky, its flat, inconsequential terrain and eerie stillness, the American heartland is the kind of place that just might confirm your worst fears about what comes out when the sun goes down.)

I think that art can sometimes provide a practical, human riff on the Heisenberg Principle (again, if anyone here knows about physics--'cause I sure as hell don't--feel free to correct me): in observing his subject, the artist unavoidably affects what he is observing. The same can be said of journalism and historical documentation (Capote's In Cold Blood, by all accounts, blazed a new genre that combined all three disciplines). In this film, Truman Capote seems to be aware that his mere presence prejudices his findings, and he must resort to manipulation and deception to get as close to the truth as possible. Of course, he is affected by his subjects as well, growing very fond of--and, in a way, falling in love with--Perry Smith, the young killer. Smith is played by Clifton Collins, Jr., an actor I've never been too keen on, but here he hits some good notes. He is soft-spoken, eager to please, and obviously rather taken with Capote and his intellect. However, he allows a hint of violent menace to linger just under the surface, and we see that he is just as willing as Capote to use another person for his own ends. Capote is something of a physical manchild, and Smith is his emotional equivalent; he clings desperately to the futile belief that he will be granted an appeal. Capote fosters this hope until he tires of it, then abandons Smith, waiting out the execution that will provide the ending to his book.

Capote more or less ends with Smith's hanging, and I like that it lets you use a particular set of events--the research and writing of In Cold Blood--to extrapolate a larger impression of who Truman Capote was. This stands in contrast to a film like Walk The Line, which was sort of a Johnny Cash 101 survey class (still a decent flick, I thought, just different).

(Also, in discussing art and its relationship with its subjects, it is worth mentioning that Capote views its story through a strange prism: this is a movie based on a book about a writer writing a book about real people. How many degrees of removal lead you back to the truth?)

A lot has been made of Phillip Seymour Hoffman's performance in the title role; he won just about every award out there, including the Oscar, and probably deserved to. Hoffman is a very good actor, I think, and he does an excellent job with a role that could have, and probably would have, become a caricature in the hands of a lesser talent. I know there are those who think that playing a character with almost cartoonish physical traits (in this case, Capote's underdeveloped voice and foppish carriage) is tantamount to performing a comedic impression and is not really the same as giving a real performance, and that can be the case sometimes. However, I think that really good actors go further than immersing themselves in a character's heightened physicality--they use this adornment simply as a different way into revealing something about themselves. Capote was a writer, and in their work, most good writers end up telling you something about themselves. The writer walls himself in with a story and characters and it is up to the reader to climb over that wall and find the person within. I think the same can be said of an actor playing a character with very distinctive traits--I think this is true of Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, and Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump. These characters have become touchstones and a lot of actors I know think it's cool to malign them--and maybe it is--but despite their squareness, these are still performances done with commitment and honesty, two things that actors in "realer" roles often miss. Hoffman takes the given circumstances of Truman Capote's appearance and demeanor and builds a human being from there up.
In fact, Hoffman's performance ended up reminding me of another real human being, also a towheaded and slightly effeminate eccentric. I am talking about Timothy Treadwell, the subject of Grizzly Man, Werner Herzog's interesting documentary released late last summer. Treadwell was a strange, vagabond character who somehow became infatuated with the grizzly bears that inhabit the Alaskan wilderness. He eventually moved into their backyard, styling himself as the bears' friend and protector, and after a number of years developing a kinship with the beasts, was summarily attacked and eaten. Herzog's film is interesting because it views Treadwell as more foolhardy than tragic, having romanticized a creature whose wild nature defies such trite characterizations. In recovered video footage, he comes off as a charismatic but troubled individual who used a creature he couldn't really understand to suit his own needs and paid the price for it.
When Truman Capote first travels to Kansas to research his book, he calls his editor in New York and tells him that he will write about the convergence of two worlds--one world comprising the peaceful family killed in their beds, and the other comprising the kind of men who perpetrated the act. You get the feeling that Capote is not really welcome in either world, but he will insinuate himself into both. He is not killed, like Timothy Treadwell was, but he pays a price, and so do those he encounters.

All Dressed Up And No One To Kill: "Jarhead" on DVD

2006-04-04T22:31:00.000-05:00

I must admit: my neophytic attempts at writing film reviews have been made pretty easy thus far. I have critiqued one film, Crash, that I passionately disliked, and two films, The New World and Inside Man, made by extremely talented directors--Terrence Malick and Spike Lee, respectively.
Of course, writing a critique of a film that summons a lot of venomous sentiment, as Crash did for me, is relatively easy. So is critiquing the work of a master storyteller. Directors like Malick and Lee, for better or worse, leave a very distinctive stamp on their films, and individuality can sometimes be viewed as half the artistic battle. Almost any artistic discipline makes a big deal out of the artist's "voice," and when that voice is unique, it lends itself to honest criticism (of course, the knife cuts both ways in this respect--unselfconscious individuality also equates to vulnerability, and criticism of a unique voice is never exclusively positive).
Sam Mendes' Jarhead is about life in the Marine Corps, an institution that actively and necessarily seeks to snuff out all traces of individuality present among its members. Perhaps Mendes intentionally suffused his film with a military air of drab anonymity (owing in no small part to Roger Deakins' washed-out cinematography), but Jarhead, though generally solid and entertaining, seemed strangely devoid of a definitive personality. Like one of its eponymous soldiers performing a drill, the film was sharp and professional, yet never seemed able to break out of formation.
Mendes, of course, is the former London theater director who made a big splash with his film debut, the Oscar-winning American Beauty. I stand by American Beauty, despite a lot of backlash; however, I felt that Mendes' second film, Road to Perdition, deserved its largely mediocre reception. Perdition, like Jarhead, was based on a written volume (Jarhead was adapted from Anthony Swofford's memoir, which I have read, Perdition from a graphic novel, which I have not), and like Jarhead it is sleek and generally well-made, but in the end can only be viewed from one angle. Turn either film on its side, and its flatness is revealed. Mendes' shortcomings thus far may be a result of his background in theater, a live mode of performance necessarily constrained by space and time. These real-time constraints are, however, what gives theater its ultimate depth. It is the intangible chemistry of live performance that rounds out a good play. A film director has to find something, other than all the cheap tricks a camera can afford, to give his movie a beating heart, and Mendes may not have mastered this act of alchemy just yet. If he can build on his considerable talents, his films may one day be as easy to review as those of Spike Lee and Terrence Malick; right now, I'm not really sure where to start.

However, since Jarhead IS based on a book, that's probably a pretty good jumping-off place.

I read Jarhead about two years ago. It was written by Anthony Swofford (played by Jake Gyllenhaal in the movie), a Marine Sniper in the first Gulf War. I found it to be a pretty good read, and a bit of a curiosity among war memoirs: Jarhead is largely about the experience of being built into a bloodthirsty killing machine and then dumped into a war where all the killing is done by smart bombs and laser-guided missles. I remember it being well-written and engaging, if not something of a self-fufilling prophecy: it is about a war where nothing really happens (at least from a certain perspective) and, though the story is interesting, by the end, nothing much has happened. The literary world has been memoir-crazy for some time now, and I find that a lot of memoir (neither Jarhead the book, nor Jarhead the movie being an exception) lands on paradoxical ground. A memoir--especially one chronicling war or other cataclysmic personal experience--seems to always contain an element of the cautionary tale. However, no memoirist seems immune from romanticizing his or her experience, and now that they have lived through it, no matter how horrid it may have been, they seem compelled to tell the story because it is probably the most interesting thing that's ever happened to them.

As such, Jarhead the book was a bit inflated, but able to explain and justify itself in a way that a two-hour movie cannot. In the book, Swofford is able to explain his motivations for enlisting in the Marine Corps at eighteen years of age. His relationship with his father, a Vietnam veteran, is fleshed out. In the film, it is given a two-second gloss-over that doesn't satisfactorily explain anything.

In the opening scenes of the film, Swoff (as he is referred to throughout) tells a drill sergeant that he joined the Corps because he "got lost on the way to college." And through the duration of the film, Gyllenhaal, with his mournful puppy-dog eyes, will seem the only soldier in his unit who possesses an iota of introspection and critical thought. I don't know about you, but I am a little weary of movies based on books where the main character and subsequent memoirist has to constantly seem the most intelligent of his compatriots, mostly so that we know he is the only one capable of telling the story later on.

Swoff may be the eventual teller of the tale, but beyond this role he is never sufficiently explained as a person. The film opens in bootcamp, and we see Swoff becoming a soldier, buying into the Marine Corps dogma, and apparently loathing himself for it. But since we never really know who he was to begin with, we can't be sure why he is so eager to hang on to his civilian-world humanity. Jarhead (or maybe Jarhead's screenwriter, William Broyles, Jr., himself a Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam) assumes that any normal person would, which may be true, but the way the film seems to wink at you is a weaker device than the brutal voyeurism of a film like Full Metal Jacket.
I must give Jarhead credit, though--it is essentially a black comedy, as well as being the most post-modern war film to date (with the possible exception of Three Kings, a very different, and I think, superior, flick). War is an experience that a relatively miniscule portion of the populus has first-hand knowledge of. As such, fictionalized depictions of war, have, for most of us, become synonymous with the real thing. Many critics have lauded the harrowing opening of Saving Private Ryan as an incredibly realistic depiction of the D-Day landing, but how many of them really know?
Jarhead accepts this truth and applies it to its subjects: Swoff and his buddies are Gen-X soldiers, raised on The Deer Hunter, Platoon, Apocalypse Now. In one scene, the unit hold a screening of the latter film, and the Marines hoot and holler as if they're watching a football game.
Also, look out for Chris Cooper as the Colonel who greets Swoff's unit when they are finally deployed to Iraq. Cooper addresses the young Marines from a stage with a microphone, selling the boys on their upcoming mission as slickly as a preacher leading a tent revival. It is always fun to see a veteran swagger a little, especially among a sea of young actors without much room to play, and Cooper's scene is both fun and prescient--the way he psyches up his young killers has new meaning now that we have lived through Bush II's rotating set of justifications for the current war in Iraq.
Jamie Foxx also gives a stand-out performance as a slightly off-kilter Staff Sergeant. Foxx started out as a brilliant impressionist and sketch comedian (remember In Living Color?) and here he brings a touch of that bugged-out magnetism to the role of a career Marine who chooses to re-enlist because he "loves this shit."

Jarhead is most wooden when trying to comment on the de-humanizing experience of bootcamp. It becomes more interesting when the unit deploys to Iraq, and listless months are spent wishing for war; it is at its most interesting when Desert Shield becomes Desert Storm and all those prayers are finally answered. There is a certain perversity present in the elation and excitement demonstrated by these young men when finally given the opportunity to kill. These are post-post-Vietnam Marines; it has all been debunked for them, they understand that war and killing are not glorious but they want to go to war and kill anyway. There is a scene in which one of the snipers, having finally been given the order to kill, cries when the order is rescinded. You may find yourself empathizing with this character's desperation more than you are repulsed by his urge to annihilate.

I can say that I enjoyed this film, and though I think Jake Gyllenhaal was miscast as the lead (I always pictured Swoff looking more like Jon Favreau) I don't think he gave a bad performance. However, there seems to be a deeper layer of meaning missing here that could've made this a really good movie. In Mendes' world, things seem to come too quickly and easily. I think the problem is that, despite pretty good preformances and direction, crack editing and cinematography by the venerable Walter Murch and Roger Deakins, respectively (and also a pretty cool period soundtrack featuring a lot of early '90's hip-hop), we never get a real glimpse of these boys' souls, which, in the end, is really what a war movie is about, isn't it? The point behind all these memoirs, written and recorded both, is that, ultimately, the event is a mirror that the teller has no choice but to look into.

In the book, Swoff's return to the States, and the interactions he has with civilians as well as his former comrades, comprises a very significant portion of the narrative. Here, these events are too neatly summed up in a montage, and the ending falls flat when it thinks it's hitting a note of profound resonance.
I wonder if Jarhead will perform best in a time-capsule capacity; not so much as a chronicle of the Gulf War, but as a snapshot which yields some small clue as to who it was fighting the American empire's strange wars of choice in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. As the historical implications of Gulf Wars I and II come into focus, our record of how we viewed the soldiers fighting those wars, and how they viewed themselves, will undoubtedly take on a newfound significance. Until then, Jarhead remains a not-bad film worth a rental.

NYC Everything: Spike Lowers The Rim With "Inside Man"

2006-03-28T22:44:00.000-05:00

So there's this indoor sports complex back home in Baltimore called Grandslam USA where my friends and I used to go to play basketball. Normally, pickup games would take place at various playgrounds and school gyms; the fun and indulgent part of playing at Grandslam was that you could lower the rims as much as you wanted before playing.
Alley-oops were thrown, slow big men turned into mini-Shaqs down low, and any fast break that would normally culminate with a respectable layup now ended with an exclamatory dunk. It was fun and exhilarating, yet still took something away from the overall quality of play. Our games became sort of caricatured and silly, but hell, man, we were dunking, so in the end who cared?
I thought of the old Grandslam games while watching Inside Man. This is the first straightforward genre piece that Spike Lee has undertaken (although I think his 25th Hour started to lean in that direction) and the diminutive director certainly seems to be playing on a court where the goals have been knocked down a foot or two: every move is assured, and though the action is masterful and exciting, it's almost more than the film can contain. By the end it all feels a little silly and excessive, but so much fun has been had, and so many dunks thrown down that we don't really care.
Inside Man gives you the simple pleasure of seeing a pretty good script and solid performances by good actors channelled by someone who really knows how to tell a story. It is done with good humor and spirit and, unlike a lot of movies, doesn't leave you feeling ripped off when the lights come up. And there's something to be said for that.

(I don't mean financially ripped off; at $10.75 a ticket, any film that falls short of being life-changing is sort of a rip off. Okay. I'm gonna go off on a mini-rant here. The kind of rip-off I'm talking about is in terms of story. Let me just go straight to the Bible to make my point: "There is nothing new under the sun." It says that somewhere in the Bible, right? Well, the point is that there are no new stories to tell. Seriously. They've all been told before. I like movies that acknowledge this truth and take their best crack at telling their stories in an interesting and skillful manner. I like movies that have enough confidence in their actors to let good performances add layers to the story that overblown writing can't. I can't stand movies that talk down to their audience. I can't stand movies that are presumptuous and pretentious enough to think they are explaining some previously undiscovered truth. Go see my review of Crash for further discussion. But I digress. Back to Inside Man.)

Inside Man opens--no surprise here--in Lee's beloved Brooklyn, with a shot of Coney Island's Cyclone rollercoaster. However, the action quickly shifts to downtown Manhattan, as a bank in the Financial District is infiltrated and taken over by a band of thieves disguised as painters. Even in these early frames it occurred to me that, for a New Yorker, it is nearly impossible to review a Spike Lee film while maintaining one's objectivity. Even more than Woody Allen, Lee manages to weave a paean to the five boroughs into almost all his films, and Inside Man is no exception.
Lee seems to be having more flat-out fun in this film than he's had in some time and there is an element of joy in the way his camera picks up the incidental bits and pieces of New York scenery that other directors might ignore. As early as the opening credits, when we see Denzel Washington's character heading to work from his home in Brooklyn, the camera lingers over a sign for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. I like Spike Lee because his films don't contain a lot of throwaway--even with this easy-to-miss moment, Spike seems to be letting you know: the action is going to take place in New York City, and, as New Yorkers tend to feel about all things that happen in their city, it will be big, bold and one of a kind.
Lee, more than any other "New York" director, is able to evoke the grandeur and tragedy of a city teeming with a million stories. His New York is bright and beautiful, wounded yet indomitable still.
The bank customers (who will soon become hostages) form a typically diverse ensemble; there's the loud-mouthed Brooklyn broad, the orthodox Jew, the Sikh who complains--in a scene whose seams are a little too apparent--about being profiled in the wake of 9/11, the lovable old Pole, the Brooklyn kid who can't stay off his portable Playstation (and if you ride the subway around 3:15 pm on a school day, you know there's some truth to this stereotype). These characters and their locquacious, "we're New Yorkers, not even a bank robbery can phase us" attitudes are a bit hoary, but the roles are so well-played, and the scenes imbued with such vigor, that you'll find yourself giving over to them.
Lee is, to misuse a phrase whose meaning I don't really know, an actor's director. His work has been accused of the type of pretension that I complained about earlier, and he sometimes paints in broad strokes (especially where his beloved NYC is concerned), but he seems to make a point of casting first-rate actors in every role, and it's too bad more directors don't--all too often I see otherwise strong movies undermined by weak supporting performances. Spike Lee is a director who exhibits great patience; he takes the time to let his actors do their thing. You get the sense that he really enjoys watching them give good performances and understands that this patience will eventually bolster the quality of his work. This stands in stark contrast to so many directors who seem to forget that watching actors act is part of the reason we go to the movies. So many soon-to-be-forgotten directors seem to view their actors as incidental, whereas Lee understands them to be essential. Just as Terrence Malick (whose The New World you can find reviewed below) tends to draw the natural world into the forefront of his narrative, Lee allows his always-excellent supporting players to share center stage with the principles. In a Spike Lee film, as in New York itself, every character has a story to tell. Just look at all the great actors who have done supporting turns in his films (most of them in more than one): John Turturro, Ginacarlo Esposito, Isaiah Washington, Delroy Lindo, Danny Aiello, Samuel L. Jackson, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Barry Pepper, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee...and I could go on. In Inside Man alone, you've got Christopher Plummer, Jodie Foster, Clive Owen, Chiwetel Ejiofor (who knew this guy was English?) and Willem Dafoe (who, unfortunately, doesn't have nearly enough to do).
But of course the star of the show is Denzel Washington. And, as always, he is up to the task. I find Washington to be a sort of Clintonesque actor--I mean, the guy just exudes charisma at every turn. As sharp as a razor, he's just the man you want in charge of a situation like the one with which he is presented in Inside Man (which is, I guess, why he has built a stellar career off these kinds of roles).
Here, he plays the detective assigned to be point man in the hostage negotiations at the bank. His backstory is that he's overdue for a promotion and currently under some scrutiny involving money that has gone missing from a crime scene. Inside Man is a movie that plays with our ideas about the characters' identities--you know, in no small part because of the film's title, that everyone is not who they seem--and Washington expertly suggests the darker motives that may lie beneath his disarming air of affability and competence.
The film will keep you guessing until the end, but along the way some other major players emerge. There's Clive Owen as the mastermind behind the heist, and I have to say--the dude is as cool as ice. If Owen keeps up the pace he's recently set for himself in Closer, Sin City and now Inside Man, he's going to be a much sought-after actor, and deservedly so.
The always-excellent Christopher Plummer plays the president of the besieged bank, who has a few secrets of his own, and Jodie Foster emerges as a shady but very cagey fixer in Plummer's employ. Foster brings her ever-keen intelligence and professionalism to a rather contrived role. Her character, like almost all the charcters in the movie, is not much more than a plot functionary, but it is a real pleasure to see how a good cast and decent writing can build on commonplace conventions.
As the truth gradually reveals itself, you will come to see that the major plot points are a bit shaky--the script reaches too far in lazily plucking its payoff from historical events, but Lee layers the film so expertly that the delivery ends up being just as potent as the message.
Some might accuse Spike Lee of a sort of race-obsessed myopia, and Inside Man sometimes falters under the weight of its vigilant (and often quite clever) commentary. However, this is a film that also allows incidental humor and plain old fun to shine through at every turn. A lot of thrillers end up being extravagant acts of masturbation--stories about their stories (see the work of M. Night Shyamalan). It is a testament to Lee's compassion and talent as a director that Inside Man never loses its connection to its characters (Lee is a child of 70's cinema and this film can also be taken as a two-hour long shout-out to the great NYC heist flicks of that decade--Dog Day Afternoon, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three--and in that capacity it performs beautifully).
The success of the heist itself hinges on disguise and mistaken identity, and if you have seen it, you will find yourself unable to avoid thinking of the 1990 Bill Murray film, Quick Change. Quick Change, of course, was a comedy, but one that, like Inside Man, was inseperable from the quirky and unique spirit of New York City and its many residents.
After Inside Man's version of the heist has run its course, we are cognizant of some un-gloss-overable plot holes, but it is not until the movie's final movements that its muscular narrative rush peters out and things begin to unravel in Spielbergian fashion. I know--it might seem an ominous bellwether, hearing Spike Lee compared to Steven Spielberg in 2006. But I don't think the Spike of Inside Man has strayed so far from the Spike of Do The Right Thing as to be unable to find his way home again. In the past, he may have wanted to change his audience's attitudes and minds, if not the world, and I am sure he will be raising the rim back up to regulation height soon enough. Here, he simply wants to tell an exciting story, pay homage to a time and place, and do it all with skill and intelligence. And he does just that.

The First Cut Is The Deepest: Malick's "The New World"

2006-03-24T19:40:00.000-05:00

Terrence Malick makes beautiful films, and The New World is no exception. Now, I am not exactly saying that Malick's films, or TNW in particular, are beautiful because the acting, writing, directing and overall production adds up to a well-made movie, though that is true also, what I am saying is that Malick's films are literally, aesthetically, beautiful. No one evokes a vital, teeming natural world, rich in color and texture, the way he does (I should mention that I have never seen Malick's masterpiece, Badlands, though I have seen Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line. Yeah, the guy's only made four movies. They say that the age of the auteur, in which Terrence Malick was a seminal figure, died with Michael Cimino's failed Heaven's Gate in 1983. I believe it. TNW is the most starkly, physically pretty film I have seen in quite some time).
TNW opens, as you can imagine, with the English landing on the shores of modern-day Virginia. As is typical of Malick's movies, the opening unfolds slowly, with little to no dialogue for quite some time. I was reminded of the work of Sergio Leone, who is also known for long sequences of dialogue-free action. However, where Leone's stretches of silence tend to be metered, urgent, portending a final eruption (I haven't seen it in a long, long time, but I remember one such scene, where the only sound is a ticking clock, finally leading to a shootout in Once Upon a Time in the West), the opening passage of TNW is languid and patient. This is a movie that oftentimes allows you to fill in the spaces yourself, rather than drawing you a path from narrative point A to narrative point B.
I have to say that this gradual unfolding is a welcome relief after Crash, which starts out immediately by telling you exactly what it is about. TNW is a film that, more often than not, chooses to show, rather than tell. In contrast to many modern films (such as Crash), which tend to show their hands early on, Malick's films often make you feel as if he has a secret, as if you are only getting part of the story. I think this is partly because the natural world figures prominently in most of his work, and he makes it as important a player as the human characters. If the action often seems muted, or langorous in a Malick film, it is because he makes you aware of so much else happening all around the principles.
Of course, the story of new arrivals to a virgin continent is the perfect medium for these naturalistic tendencies. The titular New World does not come across as the idyllic paradise that other films may depict, nor is it overly foreboding. It looks like what it is--an uncultivated, overgrown, teeming and somehwhat drab stretch of coastline where not many people live. In the first instance of native/settler contact, the natives surround the English, emerging wraith-like, one by one, from under cover of tall grass. However, they do not menace these new arrivals--they are as hesitant and astonished as the English at what they have encountered.
I like that Malick allows all this to happen slowly, so it doesn't feel as if we are being rushed into the story. Two alien peoples encountering each other for the first time--that IS the story.
At one point in the initial encounter, there is some confusion and one of the settlers draws his musket and shoots down one of the natives. The pistol's report, and the victim's sudden collapse, is jarring and abberrant amidst so much quiet. Malick does not allow violence to come cheaply or easily, which I appreciate.
There is a scene, later in the film, in which the natives wage an attack on the settler's burgeoning colony. Malick refuses, unlike so many directors, to let the ensuing battle play out as neatly and naturally as a game of football. In this world, warfare--especially of the semi-modern 17th century variety--is anything but natural, and the fight is seen as disjointed, ugly, an abomination against all the beauty of its staging place.
Though the pacing of the early sequences doesn't telegraph the direction the narrative will take, we know, from history and myth, and also because Colin Farrell's hanging around, that eventually this will become the story of John Smith and Pocahontas.
Farrells' Simth--no surprise here--is something of a rogue, arriving to the shores of the new world in chains, having been the perpetrator of some mutinous rumblings aboard the ship. We also know, either through history books or through the film's implication, that Smith is a career soldier who has been around the block a few times and might just be ripe for a little salvation in an untouched land.
I'm going to say right here that I like Colin Farrell. Furthermore, I am going to say that the reason I like him is his eyes. Typing that sentence just about turned me gay (and speaking of gay, can I say that the bathroom of Cinema Village, where I saw TNW, has to be one of the gayest places in the city. Everytime I go in there, there's at least one lecherous old dude with a mustache just sort of hanging out. It's weird). I don't, however, mean that I think Farrell has pretty eyes (though I'm sure he does). I mean that there is something through the eyes, that, despite his rouguish image, suggests vulnerability, curiosity, and intelligence. This is all the more impressive, because, by all accounts, and by "all" I mean my friend whose college professor purportedly spent a night carousing with Farrell, the dude is rather dim. But the intelligence I'm talking about is a sort of deeper, instinctual intelligence. It's a quality I think a lot of good actors convey, and it's put to perfect use in TNW. Farrell's Captain Smith is a seeker who may have finally found what he's after.
We don't hear much from Smith at first. We are given his interior monolgue in the form of voice-over, which is a standard Malick device. He likes to juxtapose external action with internal dialogue, often switching from character to character (as he did to a fault, I think, in The Thin Red Line) so we are never allowed to become too comfortable with a singular point of view. John Smith's inner monologue tells us that he has some pretty lofty hopes for this new land, a place where "men shall not make other men their spoil."
Pretty soon, Smith is chosen to lead an excursion into the wood, seeking out the elusive natives who habitate there. It speaks well of this film that these mythic events unfold naturally, without trying to score points off our foreknowledge of their outcome.
Deep in the forest primeval Smith is accosted and taken prisoner by a group of natives. In my opinion, the depiction of the Native Americans in this film is fair and human; they are not romanticized or caricatured, being neither noble nor bloodthirsty savages, but rather a group of people trying to figure out how to react to a new and potentially threatening situation. The group that takes Smith is, in fact, just as willing as the English to make other men its spoil, and he comes a hair's-breadth from being brained to death before the tribal leader's daughter (whom we know to be Pocahontas, though she is never actually referred to as such) intercedes.

(Right here I'm also gonna say that one of the tribe's top lieutenants is played by Wes Studi, a Native American actor who can't seem to get cast in anything but period films that feature old-school paint and feathers Indians. What the f**k? The guy's been around forever! Can't they put him in something else? I mean, now that they're actually casting Native American actors as Native Americans, can't they branch out a little and maybe at least get the guy a guest spot on Law & Order or something? Or, if Hollywood really is prejudiced against Native American actors, can't they just pass him off as a Puerto Rican? Come on!)

As we know must happen, Smith is spared, left to live among the natives and to develop a relationship with the teenage princess. I found this to be the most arresting and essential sequence in the film. I am tempted to say that what develops, and what this film is really about, is a love story. But that's not exactly accurate. There are no cosmic implications present in this version of their relationship. They do fall in love, but not because she is smitten by the strange and handsome soldier, or he by the exotic and kind-hearted savage queen; there are none of the usual cross-cultural romantic conventions we are used to seeing in the movies, which typically involve an unspoken acknowledgement of a smoldering passion, a scene or two in which the male suitor demonstrates his charm/courage/sense of humor/generally upstanding character/some combination thereof, and the final earth-shattering consumation of the initial smoldering passion.
Here, John Smith and Pocahontas don't fall in love because they must, or because someone has scripted a lot of cutesy encounters for them, they fall in love simply because they DO. Because they spend a lot of time together and enjoy each other's company and for a time, the motions of their hearts are aligned. Their courtship is shown as a series of stolen moments, and Malick shoots it as a dream-like dance, filled with all the vigor and exhilaration of discovery.

To tell you the truth, this part of TNW reminded me of another film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which was beautiful in its depiction of the fevered and elusive way in which love becomes a kind of dream; one which you may not be sure if you are falling into or waking from.

Pocahontas is played by Q'Orianka Kilcher, who was fourteen--about the same age as the real Pocahontas--when TNW was shot. She displays a preternatural but not overbearing intelligence and an elegant, but muted, virginal, beauty. This is her movie; in the end, this is a story about a girl growing into a woman (which is, no doubt, an allegory for a million other things) and Kilcher does a fine job in an honest and understated performance.

Smith eventually leaves the depths of the forest and returns to the nascent colony he left. Here we see Pocahontas hurt at his departure, but, in keeping with her level of age and experience, afraid and unwilling to protest. Her romance with Smith has ruffled some feathers, and when her father, the tribal leader, tells her, "You are no longer my daughter," we understand that he is not disapproving of her relationship with an outsider, but lamenting the fact that she is no longer, as we say in 2006, "daddy's little girl."
The dialogue in this film is spare and economical. Oftentimes, I find that period pieces either overcompensate by making everyone sound like they're speaking some form of Middle English, or let the dialogue hew to closely to modern speech, which ends up sounding silly and anachronistic. Malick is smart enough not to let his characters hang themselves with their own words (though this could also be seen as mild cowardice, which perhaps it is), and consequently, their interactions have an air of universality that often made me forget that I was watching a flick set in 1616.

My friend Rob (who is a very talented writer and was recently published here) explained to me his affinity for the early fiction of Larry McMurtry: "He will tell you that the girl is pretty and leave it there. He assumes that 'pretty' means something to you." I thought of this description while watching TNW.
Later, after Pocahontas has been sold to the English by one of her own tribesmen, after Smith has left Virginia altogether (ever the restless wanderer, he has more dragons to slay, on top of understanding that he is too old for her), we are shown a heartbroken teenage girl. Not by way of hysteria or emotional effusion, but in the profound sadness with which Malick imbues simple scenes of Pocahontas going through her daily tasks while her heart longs for someone far away. He assumes that longing means something to you.
Later, Pocahontas, will be wooed by, and eventually marry, a tobacco farmer named John Rolfe (Christian Bale). Again, simple scenes are endowed with great poignancy, as we come to understand Rolfe's anguish at doing everything right except the one thing he cannot help: namely, that he is himself and not John Smith. After all, who among us has not been involved with someone when another's tracks are still fresh across their heart? (Wait--I don't know if I ever have, but, you know, I can imagine what it's like)
I guess what I liked the most about TNW was that these austere moments of emotional truth seemed to occur on their own, nevermind the epic nature of the story, the beautiful and sweeping photography, and the period attire (The costume design in this film was outstanding, though. Did it get nominated for anything? It should have.).
Sure, Terrence Malick's style as a director can be seen as overwrought, and in some respects, his greatest gift as a filmmaker, his patience and even-handedness, is also his biggest shortcoming. There were parts of this film that dragged horribly, and sometimes you wish Malick would ease his grip on the Auteur reigns a little, cut loose, let his characters talk more, have some fun. However, this film will treat you to singular moments of beauty that you are not likely to find matched in many American movies these days. I recall the harrowing image of the bare bones of a half-built church lit by a bonfire against a pitch-black sky (I've been reading "The Confessions of Nat Turner" by William Styron, the real-life events of which took place on the same Virginia soil of TNW. I couldn't help but think about America's connection to the land itself, how the land is tied right up in our collective triumph and misery).
Also, be sure to note the fetid, desperate place that is early Jamestown. There is an interesting scene when Smith returns to the colony after living in the wilderness and his culture shock is personified by a trio of nattering urchins who accost him the second he passes through the city gates. There is no pastoral ideal here--earliest Jamestown resembles a budding skid row, where diseased, starving, sinister people abound. It's hard to take this desperate depiction as anything other than a Rousseuan comment on the madness of society.

Near the end of TNW, John Smith and Pocahontas see each other again, briefly, and he tells her that their dalliance in America "seemed like a dream." Doesn't life depend so much on context? What's immediate and real in the wilds of a new continent becomes dream-like in civilized England. And it's in the recognition that though the dream has ended, its imprint lingers on, and the heart is changed for it, that catharsis occurs. Note how joyously the camera dances across the screen in the last few minutes of this film. Sure, it's a little much, but it's just as easy to give over to it as it is to poke fun.
There was an article in the Times recently about the cult following that has built up around TNW. Apparently, this is the kind of flick that doesn't have fans so much as it has disciples. I would not number myself among that camp--in fact, I probably wouldn't want to see this one again for some time, and I imagine that a lot of its power will be lost in the translation to DVD. But, in the end, I can say that this was a movie that gives you an experience, which is more than I can say for a lot of movies I see.
And it does seem that the older I get, my memories DO take on the quality of dreams, which is perhaps a more resounding quality than memory itself. I gotta lay off the Nyquil.

2006-03-24T18:29:00.000-05:00

NERDS!!!

I hate nerdy Duke and their nerdy fans and their nerdy players and their nerdy coach.
And yesterday, LSU knocked them out of the tournament. Ha ha! (I also like LSU because their star forward is named Glen Davis, which was--well, probably still is--the name of my once-favorite baseball player for the Houston Astros, who was traded to my hometown team, the Orioles, and became the biggest bust in history)

2006-03-23T18:33:00.000-05:00

All The World's A Stage

This morning, while half asleep in bed, I heard the beginnings of an interesting story on WNYC. The nascent wait-this-might-make-a-good-blog-posting part of my brain quickly switched on and up pricked my ears.
It seems that a play, My Name is Rachel Corrie, based on the writings of the titular American activist killed (with a not un-significant amount of subsequent media coverage) by an Israeli bulldozer while protesting the demolition of Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip, was set to open yesterday at the New York Theater Workshop, but was cancelled at the last minute due to concerns that...well, concerns that...well, here, read what James Nicola, Artistic Director of the NYTW has to say about it:
"[NYTW's board was] not confident that we had the time to create an environment where the art could be heard independent of the political issues associated with it."
What?
Is this what art, and theater in particular, is supposed to do? WAIT until a hot political climate has cooled down before commenting, thereby rendering their comment tardy and irrelevant? Well, if you follow American theater at all, you are probably saying, "Yeah, obviously," and you're probably right. I mean seriously, big-time theater couldn't really be less relevant if it tried. Nobody goes to the theater en masse anywhere in this country except here in NYC, and what are the big draws on Broadway? Hairspray, Aida, Spamalot, et al. Crushing social commentaries, all. But I digress.
I think this story dovetails nicely with the conversation about Crash that kenneth and soze were kind enough to initiate, so let's discuss a little ( I should tell you that I haven't seen or read this play, so I am unable to comment on its content in a firsthand manner).
First of all, Rachel Corrie was, obviously, an advocate and activist for Palestine, and the play, edited by Katherine Viner (who gave an interview with Brian Lehrer on WNYC, which I'll link below), is supposed to be pretty much unapologetically pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel (That's probably sort of an over-simplification, but you know what I mean). So, while Nicola cites a vague lack of proper "environment" for the play's release, the implication is that NYTW cancelled its run of Rachel Corrie probably to avoid riling its sizeable contingent of Jewish patrons.
In the interview with Mrs. Viner on WNYC today, she also mentioned that Ariel Sharon's poor health has been cited as a factor contributing to the play's cancellation.
I should also mention that this play has had a long and extrememly successful run in London, scene of the most recent mid-east-related terrorist violence in the Western world. It was, in fact, to be directed at NYTW by Alan Rickman, who is both English and a damn good actor (to read what Vanessa Redgrave, another damn fine Brit actor, and notable Palestinian advocate has to say about it, go here).
The questions that NYTW's cancellation of Rachel Corrie raise are many.
First: has Europe--in this case, England--proven once again that it has much bigger balls than the U.S. in terms of staging what could be viewed as incendiary pieces of art during times of political upheaval and uncertainty? Well...ummmm....yeah. Remember what happened to the Dixie Chicks (a country group!) just for taking a little dig at Der Fuhr--I mean the President--on stage?
Second: On the same show (Brian Lehrer), recent Pulitzer-Prize winning (and really good) playwright John Patrick Shanley said that the concern over Corrie was part of a current "international gangsterism" directed at the arts (Gangsterism? We ARE talking about plays, here, but Shanley's a writer, what do you want from him?). Shanley went on to name the furor over the Danish cartoons as part of the aforementioned (and made-fun-of-by-me) "gangsterism," and took the New York Times to task for refusing to run them. He said that the artist's job is to make art, and to understand that having the conviction to stick to your message can sometimes be enough to get you killed, as in the case of Theo Van Gogh.
Now, IS art being created amidst an atmosphere of intimidation and coersion these days? (Artists/dilettantes--please feel free to weigh in)
SHOULD Shanley be lumping the now-ridiculously-infamous-even-though-no one's-seen-them-cartoons in with "art" as a whole? (I can't say. Never seen 'em. However, my inclination is to say that cartoons don't count as art. Maybe The Simpsons, but not comic books, even those really cool and for adults graphic novels, because I don't really think books with pictures should be calling themselves novels.) Viner responded to Shanley's comments by saying that those cartoons were racist and intended to insult and provoke and should not be compared to Corrie, which she considers to be a legitimate piece of art.
If what Shanley says is true (on some level), what is it then the artist's responsibility to do? Viner made what I think was a good point (though not having seen the play, I can't say whether it's really true) by saying that Corrie is a piece of art, and its primary role is as a piece of art, not as a record of modern history. This touches on some of the things that I was trying to say about Crash. According to Viner, Corrie, while certainly about very potent things, is, at its base, a play, a story. And according to a lot of people, a very good one. If a story is told interestingly and tastefully, should we allow prevailing social winds, and the fear that some people might be upset to silence the artists who want to tell that story? (In my opinion, taste is a very important part of the equation. You may have heard that the release of the new flick V: For Vendetta was postponed to put some distance between its depiction of a London subway bombing and the actual event that happened this summer. It's themes and subject matter were not edited--the issue there seems to be one of trying to maintain tastefulness.) To me, the idea that the production of a piece of theater with political undertones should be vetted by its potential audience is ridiculous. I mean, to a point--the Irish Rep Theater might want to test the waters a little before staging Famine! The Musical! but you get my point (do you? I keep saying that but I have no idea).
I have a degree in theater (not nearly as viable as it sounds) and happen to spend a good deal of my time around "theater people" trying to make theater. One of the core beliefs that theater people hang on to is that theater takes risks, doesn't answer to anyone. This is partly because everyone making theater is broke and has no one with money around to answer TO. I find James Nicola's excuse that they want to wait until the environment is "right" for a production of Corrie to be troubling. I mean, first of all, when the f**k does he think that's gonna happen? Rachel Corrie was killed two years ago, and in case Nicola hasn't noticed the little spat the Palestinians and Israelis have been engaged in over land has been going on...oh...forever, with no sign of stopping any time soon.
If you penned a brilliant abolitionist screed in 1860 and then let it sit until your great-great-great-grandchild found it and published it today, you would still have a fine piece of writing to your credit but its immediacy as a piece of art or propaganda would be non-existent. I have said repeatedly that I think art (at least narrative art--books, plays, film) should not exist only to effect social change or proselytize, but primarily to tell a story, to tell you something about people. I don't mean to suggest that it should take place in a social vacuum. I just believe that the message should grow from an interesting story with interesting characters. And if My Name Is Rachel Corrie-- a play that might have been seen by 500 or 1000 people at a tiny theater in the East Village--was that sort of a piece of art, and is now being curtained due to its backers' cowardice, that's a damn shame. Precisely because we know the big movies and plays aren't gonna have any guts, we need tiny theater companies to have some (especially when you're dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict--I mean, who DOESN'T get pissed off by some facet of that gordian knot?).
I would like to end here by saying that I don't want to talk much more about "what art is," a) because I don't really think I'm qualified to say, and b) because I think "art" is not something that should really be quantified, summed up, and spoken of in absolutes. Oh and c) because, come on, that's just sort of a bulls*** conversation.
To listen to Katherine Viner, who has a lot more interesting things to say than I do, on WNYC's Brian Lehrer show, click here. To see a further discussion of Corrie the person--by Viner, again--and the play based on her writings, go here.

The Thing About Subtlety Is That It's Just So Small: A Film Review

2006-03-20T15:13:00.000-05:00

I think it's actually appropriate that Crash won the Oscar for Best Picture this year. Like the awards ceremony and all its attendant hoopla, Crash is big, glossy, self-righteous, overly long, and not nearly as important as it thinks it is.
Before you pop this bad boy into your DVD player, be sure to put on a helmet, because you're about to be clobbered over the head. Over and over and over...and over again.
This is a moderately sprawling film (sprawling in terms of cast size, compact in terms of ideas) that purports to examine the interstices of a large, multi-ethnic group of Los Angelenos' lives through the lens of the characters' various preconceptions and prejudices regarding race and class. It is a film, like so many heralded American films of recent years, that lets you know right off the bat that it is about VERY IMPORTANT THINGS, then never lets you out of its self-important chokehold.
There's a pair of carjackers played by Larenz Tate (this guy's still in movies?) and Ludacris (this guy's in movies?) who--honestly--end up looking more like a constantly bickering gay couple than a pair of hoods. Seriously. I'm not just saying that to be funny. In an even more egregious bit of miscasting, you've got Ryan Phillipe and Matt Dillon as the least believable pair of beat cops on earth (I don't want to get off on a rant, and I know Phillippe is an easy target, but seriously, who finds this guy watchable? What happened to the days when leading actors were charismatic and interesting? Newman? Brando? Who casts these guys nowadays? They're a bunch of ciphers), Dillon as a hardened, arch-racist veteran, Phillippe as his green, idealistic partner. Sound like something you've seen before? Yeah, I thought so.
Let's see, there's also Terence Howard and Thandie Newton as a successful black couple, Brendan Fraser and Sandra Bullock as their white counterparts...ummm...there's a Chicano locksmith who can't seem to fix a lock anywhere in L.A. without his clients thinking he's gonna rob them (you wonder how the guy stays in business...he's played by Michael Pena, who's been hanging around forever and upstages a lot of the "name" actors in this film. I like acting and watching and analyzing actors a lot, by the way), there's a Persian shopkeeper who's both the victim and perpetrator of some racist prejudgements....oh and Don Cheadle's there, too, hanging around the periphery of things as a cop investigating an accident that, by the film's end, will show how all of these various characters and their stories are tied together.
As often happens in films with this type of story structure, the action plays out in a series of vignettes that make you feel as though you're catching snatches of disparate stories, when, in actuality, there is a massive narrative overlap that is meant to form some sort of cohesive whole. I was reminded of Robert Altman's film, Short Cuts, which also follows a group of Los Angelenos passing in and out of each other's lives throughout the course of a day. I have only seen bits and pieces of Short Cuts, but I know that it is based on the brilliant short stories of Raymond Carver. As I watched Crash, I found myself wondering, "Why are Carver's short stories (none of which, incidentally, are set in L.A., but usually in the small towns of the Pacific Northwest, instead) so good, and Crash so mediocre?" I think the answer (beside the fact that books are pretty much better than movies and Raymond Carver was sort of a genius) is that Carver's body of work is a masterpiece of understatement--his world is a rather barren and mundane piece of terrain in which the odd kernel of truth can be found gleaming beneath the silt of daily life.
He writes about normal people leading normal lives and all that normality compounds itself into something close to insight.
Crash is the kind of flick that purports to be about normal people, but populates its world with a bunch of characters who don't act a damn bit normal--I wish more writers and filmmakers would understand that a film loses its resonance and becomes less human, less insightful and less relevant when its characters seem like constructs, ciphers that exist only to propel some hackneyed "message" forward.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for messages and themes and addressing important issues and everything, but the point of art (one of the points, anyway), is that it's about humanity. Ultimately and essentially, art is about people. When you create characters that look, but don't speak or act like human beings, what you've got is a puppet show--look there's Don Cheadle with Paul Haggis' hand up his ass! (Haggis is Crash's director and screenwriter--he also wrote Million Dollar Baby, but don't even get me started on that one)
In his memoir, This Boy's Life (also kind of a money movie), Tobias Wolff said "It takes a childish or corrupt imagination to make symbols out of people." (Or something close to that) I wish someone had tattooed that on Haggis' forehead before he made Crash. I mean, don't get me wrong, symbolism is all good, and in most film/theater/literature, the characters DO and SHOULD play symbolic roles (go look over your Huckleberry Finn notes from 10th grade English), but if that's ALL they are, well, you better be able to pull it off with some serious style (it seems that Wes Anderson, in films like The Royal Tennenbaums, is able to do that pretty well).
Crash is a movie where the characters yell and scream a lot and make a lot of grave assessments and it's all supposed to let you know that important things are afoot, but all it really ends up doing is showing you a bunch of people yelling and screaming and making grave assessments, almost pointlessly.
There's a scene in which our poor locksmith, who comes off as about the nicest guy you've ever seen, tries to fix a lock in the Persian's store. Locksmith tells Persian, I fixed the lock, but the door is broken and you need to have someone fix it. In about two seconds flat, the Persian starts screaming at the locksmith, "Fix the door! Fix the door! You lie! You cheat!", eventually running the guy off. Now, it couldn't be more obvious what the INTENT was here if it were close-captioned on the screen: the shopkeeper is making an assumption based on race and thinks the Chicano locksmith with the menacing neck tattoo is ripping him off. It's about as subtle as a howitzer. We know this is what is happening because it's being broadcast at a million decibels, not because anything INTERESTING or REAL comes about ORGANICALLY as a result of these two characters' interactions. Race be damned; the shopkeeper ends up looking like a frigging sociopath and a potentially interesting situation (and one whose facsimile happens a million times a day here in NYC, I imagine) is rendered completely uninteresting. If characters don't seem human, how can you care about them?
Later, the shopkeeper gets a gun and shows up at the locksmith's house. Words are exchanged, a shot is fired, and for an excruciating (and extremely melodramatic) few moments, it looks like a child may have been shot. It turns out that everything is okay, and we are given a real moment: the shopkeeper stands there, realizing not that he has killed someone, but that he has simply acted like a huge creep, which ends up being extrememly poignant, because it's a feeling we can all RELATE to.
Another interesting scene amidst a sea of hackery depicts Thandie Newton as a motorist trapped in a burning car. Matt Dillon, the racist cop, is trying to rescue her. She does not want to be rescued by him. Earlier that day, he stopped her and her husband without cause and got a little too handsy while performing a search on her. She struggles, even while trapped inside a mangled SUV, to get away from him. He fights to get a hold of her, extricates her against her will. For a few minutes, this scene is actually beautiful. It becomes a dance. We are seeing, briefly, two people struggling with something real and visceral between them and consequently, we can see their humanity. And it is good, sayeth me.
Can I also say that Matt Dillon's nomination for Best Supporting Actor is a f***ing joke? I mean, congrats to him, but honestly.
He has a monologue (the one that you can just imagine really snared the nod for him) about how his father worked his whole life and never needed charity from the government and now he's getting screwed by insurance and hospital bills in his old age and blah blah blah....it looks like something from Saturday Night Live. Seriously. Dillon has this stilted way of delivering his lines that made him hilarious in There's Something About Mary, and even worked in the pulpy Wild Things, but here it just sounds, well, stilted.
As you can probably glean from my first post, I am interested in the dynamics of race in America. And I guess Crash should get kudos for at least trying to explore the issue a little. But then, maybe not. Race, like most anything of any weight or significance, is a complex and nuanced issue. When you turn your characters into caricatures you make it so they cease to be human, and when they cease to be human, they lose their complexity. Humans are complex and when you take that away, you are insulting your audience. It seems to me that when you create a story whose base is really about people, all the important messages and themes will float to the surface.
Maybe, were I not as very white as I am, this film would have more resonance for me, but I doubt it. If I were a few degrees dumber, I think then it would. Crash is the kind of flick that assumes that race is a more potent common denominator than intelligence (maybe it is, but in a different way?). This film is pure Pyrite--fool's gold--and the dum-dums in la-la land can't ever seem to tell the difference.
For an infinitely more nuanced and arresting film about the ripple effect one's actions can have, and the overlap of macro-level social factors onto the micro-level of quotidian life, try Cache, a French film released late last year. Being a French film, it addresses the interactions of upper-class white French and working class French-Algerians, but the general idea is the same. I should note that I didn't actually like this flick all that much when I saw it, but then went and read a bunch of reviews and realized that the allegorical point of the film pretty much went right over my head. So maybe you shouldn't trust my opinion, but all the real film critics seem to think it's pretty good.