November 2008: 15 Mini Reviews
November 14, 2008
The last fifteen films I've seen.
3 Godfathers ('48): Oft filmed story about three bank robbers who, while running through the desert eluding the law, stumble upon a dying woman who entrusts them her just born baby. Of course the spin on this altogether biblical story is that our bank robbers are really just three softies (led by John Wayne, followed by Pedro Armendariz and Harry Carey Jr.), and when they are run down by Sheriff Ward Bond, either killed or captured, they're heralded as heroes instead of robbers and murderers. This lesser studied John Ford western is notable primarily for the lush Technicolor cinematography of Winton Hoch, working for the first time with Ford, his greatest collaborator, who together would go on to revolutionize our image of the west in such glorious color films as “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon” and “The Searchers”.
Passing Fancy ('33): The first of Yasujiro Ozu's series of popular silent comedies starring Takeshi Sakamoto as working class single dad Kihachi, here pining over a new tenant (Nobuko Fushimi), while his beloved bratty son is ignored and falls ill after eating too much candy. The plot is nominal (a love triangle with Kihachi's best pal Jiro and the new girl is rather uninspired), but that doesn't mean Ozu doesn't present it with a marked amount of humor and emotion, especially in the final act, as Kihachi realizes his selfishness (in his parental duties, and in taking money from a kind barber to pay for medical expenses) and wonders if moving away to get a better job wouldn't be best for everybody. It's seemingly gigantic decisions like this that Ozu renders with such touchingly quaint observation, ultimately setting the groundwork for the weightier parent-child grown up relationships that would come to dominate his cinema in the following decades.
The Quiet Duel ('49): In post war Japan, doctor Toshiro Mifune contracts syphilis from a patient during surgery and rather than tell his devoted fiancée about the disease, dumps the girl for her own good. Akira Kurosawa's second pairing of Toshiro Mifune as pupil to Takashi Shimura's mentor (here he's his father, also a doctor) is rife with a dark post war understanding of poverty and sickness, with the syphilis storyline becoming an obvious, heavy-handed metaphor for the ills of the country, while young love is sacrificed for the betterment of a drab social criticism. Playing around with deep focus more extensively than in the previous year's “Drunken Angel”, Kurosawa presents a crackling clinic atmosphere that sometimes makes up for the melodramatic leanings of the plot, showing a director beginning to experiment more and more with frame construction and motion, while still smoothing out the intricacies of plot development and the kind of social political judgment that makes the following “Stray Dog” and “Ikiru” so memorable.
I Vitelloni ('53): Brilliant nostalgia piece from Federico Fellini, arguably the best film of his formative, post neo-realist years, about five man-child layabouts in a small country town who sponge off family, dodge responsibility, and revel in the joys of booze, women, and male friendship. When the most dashing of the group, Fausto (Franco Fabrizi), is forced to marry a girl he knocked up, and get a job at a local merchant shop, the remaining pack envy his seemingly adult choices, until he hits on the boss's wife, steals a priceless statue from the inventory, and nearly destroys all the earned good will of the marriage. Fellini's autobiographical examination of friendship, responsibility, and growing up is filled with joyous moments tinged with nostalgic yearnings and disappointments, like when the group intellectual (Leopoldo Trieste) dismays at the wasted opportunity of selling a play to a boozy fey actor from Rome, or when a rambling, drunken Alberto Sordi longs for his beloved sister, who has run away with a two-timing boyfriend; it's a dreamy landscape of parties and loafing, perpetuated with deeply felt emotions of regret and loss, but not without a positive understanding for the hopes of future prosperity.
Autumn Sonata ('78): Over the course of two or three days, an estranged mother and daughter reconnect and spill pent up emotions in this classic introspective drama from Ingmar Bergman. Bergman uses a similar strategy from “Cries and Whispers” and “Scenes from a Marriage”, isolating family members in private country residences, examining them with an intense series of long takes and extreme close-ups, where no emotion is uncharted, no blemish undervalued. As the mother, a distant concert pianist, constantly on the road and away from her family, Ingrid Bergman is commanding yet vulnerable, unaware of the psychological pain she has inflicted on her adult daughter (Liv Ullmann), but tentative to fully commit to a new relationship that might heal old wounds. For those familiar with Bergman's work of this era, “Autumn Sonata” doesn't bring anything radical to the table, but the lead actresses give a clinic in concentrated, sometimes repressed, often explosive dramatic acting, and Sven Nykvist's browns and oranges lend a much needed autumnal glow to the dark, cathartic dramatics of Bergman's mother-daughter psycho therapy.
Le Deuxieme Souffle ('66): Aging gangster Lino Ventura escapes from prison and lands a gig in an armored truck robbery in this quintessential policier from Jean-Pierre Melville, adapted from Jose Giovanni's novel with a remarkable sense of universal dread, eliminating heroes from both sides of the law. As Ventura eludes the cops (Paul Meurisse as the doppelganger Commissioner Blot), hooks up with an old flame (Christine Fabrega), and works with a former partner (Raymond Pellegrin) on the brilliantly conceived billion dollar heist, Melville's text-book mixture of montage, long take, and noirish atmosphere create a world where everything runs smoothly, but paranoia, deception, coercion, and ego are always present to destroy the efficiently stacked cog. As Gu, the tough-as-nails gangster on the run, superstar Ventura uses his aging, bulky frame and vulnerable bull-dog mope to elicit a kind of criminal sympathy that works best when Meurisse is setting him up as a fall guy, and worst when seducing Fabrega (nobody ever accused Melville of being a sucker for romance), creating a character who knows his days are limited, living them out with proficient professional respectability, but with a lack of morals that makes it impossible to root for or against - the classic Melvillian anti-hero.
Flight of the Red Balloon ('07): Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien pays tribute to Albert Lamorisse's 1956 classic short “The Red Balloon” with this loose adaptation, about a harried single mother (Juliette Binoche) whose lonely young son is followed by the titular flying object. Where Lamorisse's film was a simple elegy about childhood innocence and finding friendship in unexpected places, Hou's lengthening and modernizing of the story incorporates a metaphor of life in a big city as that of increasing frustrations and troubles, where the young boy represents purity, the boy's new care-giver, a film student with a poetic eye, represents imagination, and the middle aged mother represents the daily difficulties of basic existence, sometimes devoid of both purity and imagination, but essential all the same to the human fabric. You have to find these metaphors for yourself in Hou's work, what he gives you is a slow, often motionless, series of vignettes where people either just talk, stare, or react to other people talking and staring; it's a carefully controlled mise-en-scene that is both beautiful and maddening, not unlike the films of protege Tsai Ming-liang, or fellow tri-named Asian masters Anh Hung Trang, Kim Ki-duk, and, though a bit more expressive, Wong Kar Wai.
Osaka Elegy ('36): Top film star Isuzu Yamada gives a fine performance as a modern working girl who, to save her father from creditors, agrees to an affair with her skeevy boss, a decision that ultimately ruins her image and relationships. This rather short melodrama from Kenji Mizoguchi shows the director's propensity for social criticism through the exploitation of an innocent women (the DVD comes from Criterion's box set titled “Mizoguchi's Fallen Women”), but only has a few of the cinematic earmarks that would distinguish his most famous films to follow, like a smoothly flowing camera, deep focus, and precision long takes.
Taxi to the Dark Side ('08): Alex Gibney won an Oscar for piecing together this stunningly critical and difficult examination of torture in the war on terror, using the case of an innocent Afghan taxi driver who was beaten and killed at Bagram, as an entry way into exploring the Bush administration's failure to take responsibility for what amounts to criminal misinterpretation of the constitution and the Geneva convention. With in depth interviews of soldiers, innocent prisoners, disgruntled officials, political critics, journalists, and family members, Gibney focuses on the psychological and physical ways interrogators coerce “confessions” out of innocent detainees, taking what they want to hear and using it to shape war-time policy and attacks, then shucking responsibility when that information ultimately proves false. Seen together with last year's “No End in Sight”, which Gibney exec-produced with the same kind of exhaustive research and damning testimonials of former administration members, “Taxi to the Dark Side” makes the case that Bush and his inner circle (especially Cheney and Rumsfeld) blatantly took the lives of innocent civilians at face value to push its own agenda, and that if nothing else, the acts by generals and top officials in ignoring or perpetuating this agenda is cause for expulsion or conviction.
Stray Dog ('49): Hardcore Kurosawa fans always debate about which of his films from the late '40's, early '50's is to be considered his first real masterpiece, when everything he'd been working on since the immediate post war, namely, a structured frame and editing scheme that perfectly balanced the social and political criticism of his story, finally came together in both an entertaining and intellectually provoking cinematic experience. Some prefer “Drunken Angel”, the 1947 drama that introduced Toshiro Mifune to Kurosawa as a petulant yakuza fighting tuberculosis, others wait for the international breakthrough of “Rashomon”, others still think it wasn't until 1952's structurally sound “Ikiru” that the director finally perfected that elusive goal, pure cinema, but I tend to point to “Stray Dog” as the first time when Kurosawa's budding visual style finally totally enmeshed with his political stance to the point that little could be left to improve upon. Here Mifune is a green detective whose gun is stolen on a crowded bus in the film's first scenes, leading to an undercover investigation of the burgeoning black market to sweat out the gun, and invariably, a scared, broke soldier using the gun for various crimes. What Kurosawa gives us is a police procedural that experiments with social criticism via documentary footage of the black markets (famous footage shot by AD Ishiro Honda, edited into a mesmerizing eight minute montage), while presenting a hero (Mifune) that so resembles the thief he's chasing, both physically and emotionally, it suggests the slim choices offered returning vets in a depressed and desperate economy, and how easily that road home turned left than right.
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon ('49): The second, and best, of John Ford's unofficial cavalry trilogy (preceded by “Fort Apache”, followed by “Rio Grande”) in which the director focused on the everyday lives of soldiers in defense of the great west, usually gathering for morning roll, throwing spiked-punch dances, or fighting Indians who have wandered off the reservation. All of that is here in one way or another, but Ford handles the usual Indian cliches with a deft sensitivity, comparing the war-hungry warriors with the younger cavalry men, equally ambitious and dedicated, and leveling the playing field by having John Wayne, as outgoing Captain Nathan Brittles, salute his Comanche counterpart (Chief John Big Tree) as equals before a climactic battle flames out in peace. This beautiful film, featuring Oscar winning color photography by Winton Hoch, plays best both as a more patriotic counterpoint to “Fort Apache”, which was pessimistic at best about the aggressive tactics of the United States against Indians, and as a companion to Howard Hawks' previous year “Red River”, a black and white masterwork in which Wayne worked with similar aging-cowboy material, and further impressed upon his legend the aura of a sensitive, introspective saddle master.
Rachel Getting Married ('08): Anybody nostalgic for the bohemian fun and atmosphere of a well choreographed house wedding will get a kick out of Jonathan Demme's documentary like new film, which revels in the sights, sounds, emotions, and music (much music) of two extended families getting together, for the first time, to celebrate a marriage. But buyer beware, if that's the only reason you have for seeing the film, which by turns is the most carefully devastating examination of a dysfunctional family unit, all outburst and painful makeups, this side of Edward Albee, Elizabeth Taylor, and Richard Burton, than you're in for a pre and post nuptial shock. Anne Hathaway is Kym, a nine months clean drug addict who is released from her rehabilitation center for a weekend to attend her sister's (Rosemarie DeWitt) wedding, but the crush of people surrounding her father's house, be it musicians tuning up for the festivities, bridesmaids making final dress preparations, or the general anxieties of immediate family before a chaotic day, makes the dicey homecoming rife for potential dramatics. Those come, indeed, during a rehearsal party where Kym takes the mic for an awkward confessional, and later when the estranged mother of the bride (Debra Winger) shows up, prompting painful memories of a tragedy Kym caused years ago as a teenage addict, but for all the explosive family bickering and problematic history, the film cuts the tension with the loveliness of the wedding preparation, ceremony and countless scenes of musical expression, which seem to bring the dramatics (especially between sister and sister) to a tentative halt. If you can get past Demme's constantly moving camera, which at times can leave a viewer disoriented and queasy, than the film offers emotional riches of both hurt and triumph, and in the two leads, Hathaway and DeWitt (both strong prospective Oscar nominees) fully bring a sisterly complexity that feels all too lived in to be stagy or forced. This is a film with characters that you want to embrace, hug, and comfort, even when they want to expunge from each other, and it's a testament to the superior performances, and Demme's confident direction, that unlike most wedding guests near the end of a hectic cycle, they never outstay their welcome.
Changeling ('08): Impressive looking period piece from Clint Eastwood can't help but seem melodramatic and overwrought, thanks to a showy performance by Angelina Jolie and a plot that never quite reaches it's ambitious emotional goals. Jolie is Christine Collins, a single mother in late 1920's Los Angeles, who comes home one night from a double shift to find her precious son missing; when the LAPD finally find the boy and bring him home, in a well choreographed photo op, the boy is an imposer and Collins is held suspect and imprisoned in a loony bin when she tries to confront the hoax head on. Eastwood's recreation of the early '20's period is perfect, even the Universal Studios logo before the credits is a throwback (the nod to “It Happened One Night” at the end a bit much), but this is a film where artifice can't cover up cliches and overreaching plot devices, as when a B story involving a psycho-killer (Eddie Alderson) turns a fine missing child melodrama into a horror show, then rather frustratingly, into a pompous court drama, and finally back to Jolie and her tireless search. The premise is good, and the scenes between Jolie and John Malkovich, as a radio preacher intent on exposing the wildly corrupt LAPD, are worth the price of admission alone (as is Amy Ryan in a brief scene as a prisoner in the nuthouse), but the narrative shifts are jarring, the resolution unfulfilling, and the runtime, at nearly 140 minutes, 30 minutes too long.
Role Models ('08): Winning performances and a decidedly blue screenplay help this nominal fall comedy rise above obvious storytelling shortcomings. Seann William Scott and Paul Rudd play 30 something friends who, rather than go to prison for a month following a traffic accident, agree to community service at a mentor program, where their duties involve spending time with peculiar kids – a foulmouthed 10-year-old (Bobb'e J. Thompson), and a misunderstood geek in a medieval role playing game (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). Naturally the plot hits all of the cliches you think it will – the initial standoffishness of both the adults and the kids, the wacky camp councilor (Jane Lynch), the break up and reconciliation with a girlfriend (Elizabeth Banks), and an Apatowian mix of sweetness and raunch – but when the film reaches its sublime climax, amidst a full on role play Battle Royale, with our foursome dressed in KISS makeup, it achieves a kind of geek comedy nirvana.
Man on the Train ('03): Winner of the Golden Lion and Best Actor (Jean Rochefort) at the 2002 Venice Film Festival, this film from Patrice Leconte, about a retired poetry teacher (Rochefort) who takes in a bank robber (Johnny Hallyday) and finds an instant karmic bond with the man, is all about missed opportunities, regrets, and what would life have been like had I played my cards differently. For the thief, a quiet man with a suitcase full of guns, the idyllic, ancient manor of the professor is a welcome change to life either on the run or hand-to-mouth, and for the old professor, the freedom of the wanderer, leather jacket and ties to no one, is a stark contrast to a daily routine of teaching Balzac to teenagers and soup and wine at the local diner. Both men find a kind of existential similarity in each other's situations – the thief and his dangerous robbery, the professor and a scheduled triple bypass – and played out in a series of conversational vignettes, come to realize that maybe their lives would have been better, or at least more fulfilling, in the other man's shoes. Leconte's fable doesn't so much suggest that either way of life is right or wrong, or that questioning your life's path is essential to achieving spiritual happiness before death, but it does suggest that if you're not willing to see life through the eyes of a complete stranger, or step away from yourself for a moment of introspection, than you're not doing a good enough job experiencing the tremendous complexities God has to offer. It's an intense philosophical lesson on legacy, friendship, and death, possibly Leconte's best film to date, and a tremendous showcase for the ironic, though altogether fascinating pairing of French icons Rochefort and Hallyday.
By Adam Suraf