July 2010, Part 2: 15 Mini Reviews

July 29, 2010

The last fifteen films I've seen.

The Road ('09): Rarely have I watched a movie based on a favorite book that gets the mental image in my mind so astonishingly close on screen, but Aussie director John Hillcoat ("The Proposition") perfectly matches the bleak, punishingly desperate visuals of Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece to an apocalyptic cinematic vision. Viggo Mortensen and young Kodi Smit-McPhee are excellent as McCarthy's man and son traveling south on foot through a decimated American landscape, scorched by an unseen apocalypse that has left little food, humanity, or reason for existence, but the greatness of the piece, book and movie, is the duo's moving struggle for survival, and their bonding in the face of an unthinkable situation is emotionally well realized. In flashbacks, Charlize Theron plays the boy's mother, slowly losing her grip on sanity as the apocalypse escalates, and the early happiness of the flashbacks gives a welcome burst of color to a film composed mostly of browns, yellows, and greys.

A Single Man ('09): Fashion maven Tom Ford makes a striking directorial debut with this beautifully photographed adaptation of a 1964 novel by pioneering gay author Christopher Isherwood, about one crucial day in the life of an English professor as he tries to move on after the death of his long time partner. With precision, dreamy visuals, Ford presents the grieving man (played by an excellent, dominant Colin Firth) in a series of stream-of-consciousness encounters with his own mind and memory, as well as through various conversations on the day he decides to end his life, wondering if there is hope in a life where he finds no future, but resplendent joy in brief human connections. A fine period piece, tasteful and metaphysical, reminiscent of everything from "Far From Heaven" and "Mad Men", to Fassbinder and Hitchcock, but completely of itself; this is a brilliant debut from a man who comes to cinema with his art fully formed.

Mary and Max ('09): Thoroughly bizarre, original, and sweet stop-motion feature from Oscar winning director Adam Elliot, about the unlikely pen-pal friendship of an eight-year-old Australian girl, and a 46-year-old Jewish neurotic in New York, who find an odd comfort in each others scribblings. Her world, with a drunk mother, altogether absent father, and no friends (except for a pet rooster) is a brownish Australia fraught with insecurities, like that of a lonely eight-year-old, while Max's world, a gray (with ingenious marks of red) 70's New York, is that of an obese neurotic with serious social problems, and also no friends (except for a few easily disposable goldfish and a mangy one-eyed cat); their letters, while borderline schizophrenic, serve as a desperate human connection, and it's emotionally poignant the way the letters, through the years, come to represent their deepest fears and desires, and in Max's case (brilliantly voiced by Philip Seymour Hoffman), his struggle with mental illness. The claymation, which took over a year to shoot (and five years total, from start to completion, as told in the director's commentary), a painstaking art that, though rarely practiced anymore, when mastered, is something to behold, and appreciate.

Everlasting Moments ('08): Amazing period piece from Swedish master Jan Troell, who, taking a page from "Fanny and Alexander", examines the lives of a large family in the early 20th century, focusing on a strong-willed mother who escapes the brutality of her oafish husband through a passion for photography. But nothing is that simple in this most complex of classical family dramas, as the husband, remarkably played by Mikael Persbrandt, is anything but a stock villain, and the woman (Maria Heiskanen), hardly a delicate flower, refuses to leave, or give in to his drunkenness and occasional battery, out of duty, or oath, or love, which makes the proceedings far from cut-and-dry. Troell's film is impeccably dressed in period detail, from the mother's excellent accordion plate camera, to the grueling details of poverty during the first world war and a socialist workers strike, but what makes it so memorable is the deep character study, the human emotion of a large, struggling family making it out with determination, and the psychology of remembrance, through joy, pain, and a beautifully composed photograph.

Night Train to Munich ('40): Hitchcock had already bailed to America, so this very Hitchcockian train thriller, written by the men who wrote "The Lady Vanishes", went to Carol Reed instead, and maybe that's a good thing, for while Hitch was winning Best Picture for "Rebecca", Reed was dishing out an early war comedy-thriller that's every bit as entertaining as it's predecessor, and starring many of the same actors.

It's 1939, on the eve of Britain and France declaring war on Germany, and a Czechoslovakian scientist (and his precious daughter, Margaret Lockwood, also of 'Lady') is wanted by the Reich for defense experiments; with virtually everything to lose, an undercover agent (Rex Harrison, brilliant in one of his first leading roles) takes it upon himself to extradite the pair from the Gestapo, and the likes of Paul Henreid (soon himself to bail for Hollywood, and stardom). What follows is an often darkly comic excursion into undercover cat-and-mouse territory, as Harrison convinces the Nazi brass of his credentials, but Henreid becomes suspicious, and a pair of British travelers (Naunton Wayne, Basil Radford, reprising roles from the earlier Hitchcock) get involved in the games, leading to a chase through the Alps, on train and mountain car.

Made at a time when patriotism and anti-Nazi sentiment was rife for a light-hearted exploration, before the bombing raids and true brutality of the SS was made common knowledge, this is an exciting and fun entertainment; troubling times were to come.

The Wedding Banquet ('93): Ang Lee won Berlin's Golden Bear, and much acclaim, for this sweet, funny, and serious cross-continental hit, about a gay Chinese transplant living in New York who fakes a wedding, along with his partner and a single friend needing a visa, to placate his visiting traditional parents. It's a pretty sound idea at first, but when the parents want to throw a raucous wedding banquet (which leads to an extended stay after the father falls ill), and that they all live under the same complicated roof, things don't go as planned.

In just his second feature, Lee is planting seeds that would echo years later in his cinema, from the complex gay themes of "Brokeback Mountain" (and not so much, "Taking Woodstock"), to the differences between generations ("The Ice Storm", "Sense and Sensibility"), one in which, like Ozu, for who this film could generously be dedicated, shows a respect, and love, for an older generation that loses it's children to modernization.

A wonderful film, with a uniformly good cast, though the standouts, Sihung Lung and Ah-Leh Gua, as the visiting parents who have no idea about the ruse be perpetrated behind their backs, are especially moving.

Inception ('10): Christopher Nolan plays around with dreams, perception, and reality in this super serious action epic, that takes themes familiar from "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (namely, the ability to enter a subconscious in a dream state), "The Matrix", and "Blade Runner", and creates a modern day pseudo sci-fi heist puzzle worthy of it's famed inspirations.

Leonardo DiCaprio, giving his best performance since "The Departed", plays a master dream thief, who has the ability to enter the mind of a sleeping individual, mess around, and take whatever information he needs. The flip-side of this technique, Inception, involves planting info instead of taking it, and in this scenario, that's a dangerous proposition, where failure means spending an eternity in dream "limbo", turning your sleeping brain into mush. That's what makes the plot so exciting, for when our hero takes on a big case from a rich benefactor (brilliant Ken Watanabe, of Nolan's "Batman Begins"), he has to travel three stories deep into his mark's subconscious, ducking armed security, the constant threat of mental death by limbo, and his own troubled past, which includes a tangled mess involving a dead wife (unbelievably gorgeous Marion Cotillard) and a murder wrap.

This is a freaky mind mender, but so was "Memento", Nolan's breakthrough, and like that twisted backwards running cult classic, "Inception" deals with time, memories, and human perception of reality with a dizzying array of tricks, including languorous slo-motion and expensive special effects (following "The Dark Knight", Nolan surely had a big budget), and it's riveting. Young stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, and Cillian Murphy support DiCaprio ably, but Watanabe is aces as the sly backer who gets in way too deep, and there are nice cameos by Pete Postlethwaite as a dying patriarch, and Michael Caine as DiCaprio's father.

Featuring a crushing, industrial, penetrating score by Hans Zimmer, dreamy photography by Nolan's regular DP Wally Pfister, and expert, Oscar worthy editing by Lee Smith, this is an impeccably crafted blockbuster with interesting, confounding, but not altogether confusing ideas about what it means to dream, and ultimately, how we handle our memories, good and bad, as we live out the remainder of our lives.

And it's an absolute trip.

The White Ribbon ('09): Austrian auteur Michael Haneke takes a studied look at fear and intimidation as a build-up to his usual penetration of the psychology of violence, this time situating his action in a shimmering black and white country village in the year before the breakout of the first World War.

Where Haneke usually focuses on the consequences of inexplicably evil and unnecessary violence, here he studies the effects of rigid parental upbringing in a strictly Catholic community, and how the sins of the parents trickle down to even the youngest of victims.

The cast of characters includes no less than 20 major participants, and the first hour of the film takes a mighty effort just to straighten out who is who and who is in what family, but when that's settled, and it becomes clear that the director is serving up an allegory (possibly all too clearly) for the seeds of fascism, and the following three decades, the final 80 minutes are essential.

This may be a grueling exercise in aesthetics, with a lack of action and a complicated roster of faces, but Haneke is a master of stringing the physical story along with the metaphorical symbolism of it, and though it's bleak, it's quite beautiful, and haunting.

What Did the Lady Forget? ('37): Ozu's second sound film, though after the heightened sentiment and deep analysis of poverty during the depression seen in "The Only Son", this wisp of a comedy (71 minutes) feels slight.

In a Tokyo suburb, a professor routinely submits to his commanding wife, a domestic situation that has left the man hunched and humbled. But when a young teenage niece comes to visit, with ideas about smoking and drinking and aggression, the meek medical professor begins to feel empowerment coming on.

The fractious relationship between the forward thinking niece and the traditional aunt is the kind of generational gap that Ozu loves to play up, especially in his more famous melodramas of the 50's, but though this one is just a nominal comedy of the sexes, it's planting seeds for later greatness. And as always, the mise-en-scene is perfection.

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie ('72): Bunuel takes aim at the upper class as only Bunuel can, by stranding six friends in various social situations, usually involving an aborted meal, and lets them flail and scramble as one bizarre occurrence after another besets them.

Not only a joke on the ridiculous social mannerisms of people in positions of power, but a joke on the audience as well, who become invested in the characters reaching a destination, if only to consume a meal, and routinely has the rug pulled away to reveal a dream sequence or irreverent flashback.

It's disorienting, but inventive, contemplative, and always darkly comic; a gem.

A Proposito de Bunuel ('00): Fine documentary, included on Criterion's second disc of the 'Discreet Charm' special edition, about the life and work of the great Luis Bunuel, with plenty of anecdotes and first person accounts by friends and colleagues. Loving edited, a real tribute.

Woodstock ('70): One of the great long movies of all time, Michael Wadleigh's culturally important four hour epic dissects the three day music festival in upstate New York and comes out, after miles and miles of edited footage, with a time capsule of an era, now bygone, of a country, a political battleground, and a sound, that is as thrilling to watch today, 40 years later, than it was, I'm sure, in the present.

What Wadleigh and his five camera-men, and Martin Scorsese and his team of crack editors, capture is a throng of people (hippies, musicians, volunteers, townspeople, financial backers), totally in sync with their surroundings and message (be it peace, love, anti-war, what have you), and not letting a potential disaster in the making (the rain, the mud, the electricity, the clogged highway) ruin what is essential, the gathering for a good time, and some really great music.

Of the music that makes the cut (and the 18 bonus tracks included in the loaded Blu-ray 40th anniversary edition), the best remains Jimi Hendrix and his nearly 20-minute medley of "Voodoo Child", "The Star Spangled Banner", and "Purple Haze", which is a stunning fit of guitarmanship, but Joe Cocker's "With a Little Help from My Friends" is just as iconic and powerful.

But who are we kidding, it's all great, and this is one of the essential American films.

The Art of the Steal ('09): Thoroughly fascinating documentary about the political struggle surrounding the Barnes Foundation, a collection of impressionist paintings collected by the ruthlessly private Albert Barnes who stipulated in his will that his collection never leave it's modest surroundings in a Philadelphia suburb, much to the dismay of the elite Philadelphia power players, who see dollar signs around the priceless collection.

Like any great documentary, this story is almost too unbelievable to be true, which makes it so riveting, and sad, when layer by layer Barnes' will is compromised by his own descending board of trustees, who, as the years pass after his death, begin to take on help from greedy trusts who have great influence in the political circle that wants to move the collection to a tourist destination in downtown Philadelphia, which stands for everything Barnes was against.

Ultimately, what director Don Argott and the dedicated Friends of the Barnes, who feature most prominently as the film's knowledgeable talking heads, put across is a story where money and power, which Barnes certainly had, but didn't care about, is more influential than art history and even the lawful respect of a man's legal dying wishes, and it's devastating.

Twenty-Four Eyes ('54): Sweeping yet intimate Shochiku weeper from Keisuke Kinoshita, about 18 years in the life of a provincial teacher, who forms a special relationship with the first twelve students of her first year. Spanning from 1928 through 1946, the 156 minute film focuses more on the tragic than the happy, especially through the Depression and the devastation of WWII, and there are so many tears that it's exhausting, but never less than lyrically beautiful, and Hideko Takamine as the loving teacher is memorable. Certainly one of the saddest films you'll ever see.

asuraf@dunkirkma.net