3.5/4 stars
Comic book films took some time to make their way from geeky popcorn entertainment to a major part of the mainstream cinematic sensibility, and if the snubbing of The Dark Knight from a well deserved spot in the Best Picture category at the recent Oscars is any indication, they may have some way to go. Still, the fact that movies like it are being made at all is testament to a change in perception, and Watchmen is a landmark achievement to that end. Alan Moore’s graphic novel Watchmen has been acknowledged as a major work in superhero literature for many years, but in addition to the technology necessary to make a successful adaptation, there was also the need for an audience. The movie-going public has seen the superhero parody before, but Watchmen demonstrates that they are finally ready for the superhero deconstruction.
There is an important distinction that needs to be made here. Watchmen is unlike most comic book movies (but not unlike 2005’s V for Vendetta, also originally by Moore) in that it is a true adaptation of a story, not just its characters. The film, like the novel before it, seeks to challenge an audience that is largely accustomed to being simply entertained. At this it is hugely successful. The questioning themes of the novel are faithfully realized: its take on complexities of the superhero genre, its search for a cause for optimism. The major characters are deftly illuminated through flashbacks that always seem to have something more of the story to tell us than merely what is relevant to that particular character. The big screen also enables certain devices that the page does not; in particular, the addition of era-appropriate music (often the same songs that Moore quoted as chapter epigraphs) does tremendous work in creating mood. The opening credits montage, which shows us the various subtle differences in the history of the film’s world and our own, is also outstanding. Where the story is altered from the original, it is actually made cleaner, more symmetric, a rarity in film adaptations.
Many of the performances in Watchmen are virtuoso level, though they work so well together, and are so faithful to the source material that they become somewhat invisible. Patrick Wilson hits all the right notes as Daniel, Malin Akerman brings both allure and a sense of reality to the second Silk Spectre, and Matthew Goode captures the cold moral certainty of Ozymandias. Billy Crudup’s Doctor Manhattan will be long remembered among cinema’s great aliens, characters that looked at humanity from outside with human faces. Rorschach, played by Jackie Earle Haley, is such a perfect deconstruction of the vigilante archetype that I wonder if he will make all future Batman films obsolete (how will we witness Batman’s conviction without recalling Rorschach’s madness?). Jeffrey Dean Morgan is also a revelation as The Comedian; scary, charismatic, compelling.
The place where the film suffers may be its director. I’ve heard stories of Zack Snyder saving the project from lobotomizing studio executives and truly awful early drafts, seen interviews in which he shows a great reverence for the source material, and an enthusiastic vision for the film. What he has done would have required these virtues, as well as great craft and patience. But I’m afraid that Snyder’s affinity for intense and graphic violence has brought an unsavory character to much of the film. Watchmen was a violent graphic novel, to be sure. Praised for being gritty, it challenged its audience by showing them things they would rather not see, made them consider the dark side of their superhero fantasies. The violence in this movie is not grimly realistic however, but joyfully indulgent. The unfettered machismo of 300 has no place in this story, but Snyder remains true to the style that made him successful there. This, along with a problematically meandering ending, is the gnawing fault of an otherwise excellent movie.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Milk
2/4 stars
Note: I don't believe that you can have "spoilers" for a historical drama, so I wrote this review without regard for those concerns. If it turns out I'm wrong, and you can have spoilers... then this review's got 'em.
My objection to Milk may seem a little strange. I thought, first of all, that Sean Penn was exceptional in the title role. Without hardly changing his appearance at all, Penn is nonetheless completely swallowed by the character, embodying a unique set of mannerisms, a new persona. He has impressed me in a number of movies so far, Mystic River, I Am Sam, 21 Grams… but it wasn’t until this one that I realized how completely new he is in each performance. Actors ranging from the dispensable Dane Cook to the formidable Al Pacino have a stage persona, a set of expectations that they will often fall back on. Those like Penn, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and Anthony Hopkins (to name a few) who always seem to manage a strong presence without one are impressive to me. Similarly, I’m impressed by the craft that goes into the creation of a successful period piece. A film set in the 1970s is as difficult in many ways to make convincing as one set in 1200, or in Middle Earth. Obviously my knowledge of the 70s is mostly based on movies, but still… In these areas, Milk is successful.
Nonetheless, I didn’t think it was a very good film. I’m a little more writer-centric, I think, than most reviewers you’re bound to read, but my problem with Milk was one I’ve never encountered before. The problem is that I don’t really think the story has a rising action and a falling action. In fact, I don’t think it has much dramatic structure at all. Yes, there is a brief denouement that follows Milk’s death, but this is so obviously necessary (and uninspired) that they get no credit for it. Essentially, Milk just happens until it’s done happening. The first scene is an arbitrary point in time; it almost feels like an in media res. From there, one thing follows another. There’s no change in pace, no dramatic tension, and as a consequence there are no stakes. Milk was a passionate man, and you’re interested in his struggle, but you don’t know what his goal within the context of the movie is. If you know the history behind the character of Harvey Milk then you already know that he will be elected to the board of supervisors and eventually assassinated by Dan White. I assume my knowledge on the subject is roughly average, and I didn’t know any more by way of details than that, but it was enough to rob the movie of any degree of suspense. This isn’t an inevitable feature of a historical drama, but when you make the whole question of the movie “Will he or won’t he do the thing that is the only reason he’s famous enough to have a movie,” you’re in a bad position.
This brings us to the summation, which seems to me to be the part of the review where I say good things about bad movies and vice versa. To that end: There’s a lot to like in Milk. Josh Brolin as Dan White is nearly as good as Penn, and I was glad that the movie resisted the easy temptation to play it as Milk being assassinated for being gay. The actors are excellent, the production is terrific, the dialogue snappy. For all I know, most people are likely to agree with all those rave reviews out there. But I don’t think that Milk works on a basic level, so I call it a failure. Last year, I wrote a 1 star review of No Country for Old Men, expecting to be shouted down by anyone I knew who cared enough to read it. What happened instead was that I heard, for the first time, from a lot of people who agreed with me. I’m looking forward to the feedback on this one…
Note: I don't believe that you can have "spoilers" for a historical drama, so I wrote this review without regard for those concerns. If it turns out I'm wrong, and you can have spoilers... then this review's got 'em.
My objection to Milk may seem a little strange. I thought, first of all, that Sean Penn was exceptional in the title role. Without hardly changing his appearance at all, Penn is nonetheless completely swallowed by the character, embodying a unique set of mannerisms, a new persona. He has impressed me in a number of movies so far, Mystic River, I Am Sam, 21 Grams… but it wasn’t until this one that I realized how completely new he is in each performance. Actors ranging from the dispensable Dane Cook to the formidable Al Pacino have a stage persona, a set of expectations that they will often fall back on. Those like Penn, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and Anthony Hopkins (to name a few) who always seem to manage a strong presence without one are impressive to me. Similarly, I’m impressed by the craft that goes into the creation of a successful period piece. A film set in the 1970s is as difficult in many ways to make convincing as one set in 1200, or in Middle Earth. Obviously my knowledge of the 70s is mostly based on movies, but still… In these areas, Milk is successful.
Nonetheless, I didn’t think it was a very good film. I’m a little more writer-centric, I think, than most reviewers you’re bound to read, but my problem with Milk was one I’ve never encountered before. The problem is that I don’t really think the story has a rising action and a falling action. In fact, I don’t think it has much dramatic structure at all. Yes, there is a brief denouement that follows Milk’s death, but this is so obviously necessary (and uninspired) that they get no credit for it. Essentially, Milk just happens until it’s done happening. The first scene is an arbitrary point in time; it almost feels like an in media res. From there, one thing follows another. There’s no change in pace, no dramatic tension, and as a consequence there are no stakes. Milk was a passionate man, and you’re interested in his struggle, but you don’t know what his goal within the context of the movie is. If you know the history behind the character of Harvey Milk then you already know that he will be elected to the board of supervisors and eventually assassinated by Dan White. I assume my knowledge on the subject is roughly average, and I didn’t know any more by way of details than that, but it was enough to rob the movie of any degree of suspense. This isn’t an inevitable feature of a historical drama, but when you make the whole question of the movie “Will he or won’t he do the thing that is the only reason he’s famous enough to have a movie,” you’re in a bad position.
This brings us to the summation, which seems to me to be the part of the review where I say good things about bad movies and vice versa. To that end: There’s a lot to like in Milk. Josh Brolin as Dan White is nearly as good as Penn, and I was glad that the movie resisted the easy temptation to play it as Milk being assassinated for being gay. The actors are excellent, the production is terrific, the dialogue snappy. For all I know, most people are likely to agree with all those rave reviews out there. But I don’t think that Milk works on a basic level, so I call it a failure. Last year, I wrote a 1 star review of No Country for Old Men, expecting to be shouted down by anyone I knew who cared enough to read it. What happened instead was that I heard, for the first time, from a lot of people who agreed with me. I’m looking forward to the feedback on this one…
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
The Wrestler
4/4 stars
The Wrestler is an impeccably real experience, a gritty movie about a man’s dirty, small and ever-contracting world. Mickey Rourke’s performance has been the focus of the movie’s acclaim, but what sealed it for me was the veracity of the life that Darren Aronofsky gave him as a boundary to that performance. Rourke plays Randy “The Ram” Ramzinski, a washed up legend of a pro-wrestler. He has sacrificed his body and everything else in his life for years over his passion for the ring, and is now left with pitifully little to show for it. I was reminded (as I often am) of Michael Mann’s work. Wrestling is for Ramzinski what Mann would call “the elevated experience of his life,” and like Mann’s characters, his passion for it leaves little else in his world intact. He lives in a trailer park and is behind on rent; he relies on neighborhood kids and a stripper named Cassidy (Marisa Tomei) for companionship. He believes that he and Cassidy may have a future together, and the movie illustrates that they do have a lot in common. They’re both in the body business and are both the worse for wear; the time it has bought them is running out. Rourke gives a performance of incredible commitment and believability, to say nothing of its physical aspects. His loneliness, his regrets, his good heart and his bad decisions, Rourke makes them all tangible.
I was almost deterred from giving The Wrestler a perfect score by a number of small factors. The first is Evan Rachel Wood, who is inexplicably popular among both critics and real people. I got tired of her big sad eyes and the camera that never tired of drinking in her good looks in Across the Universe. Here in The Wrestler, she didn’t really have time to annoy me, but it was difficult not to notice that she didn’t really do much. A lot of people have said she’s brilliant; even Mickey Rourke has sung her praises, but whenever I see one of her performances, I see acting and not the character. Perhaps Rourke and others have seen some better movies than I have. Another problem is that at times Randy does things that seem so improbably stupid that I have trouble continuing to sympathize with him. The best example may be when he blows off his daughter to go drinking, then comes crawling back for forgiveness, so soon after regaining her love the first time. You’ll recognize other examples for yourself. What I came to realize though, is that while we may not see the world on Randy Ramzinski’s terms, and he may not behave as we wish he would, we still understand him. Like an underdog sports team, we root for him even when rooting for him is hard. In the end, I was moved by the foolish extent of his dedication, smiling at his self sacrificing bravado. The Wrestler is one of those movies that sounds depressing but isn’t; it enriches you by allowing you to feel for another person’s small triumphs.
The Wrestler is an impeccably real experience, a gritty movie about a man’s dirty, small and ever-contracting world. Mickey Rourke’s performance has been the focus of the movie’s acclaim, but what sealed it for me was the veracity of the life that Darren Aronofsky gave him as a boundary to that performance. Rourke plays Randy “The Ram” Ramzinski, a washed up legend of a pro-wrestler. He has sacrificed his body and everything else in his life for years over his passion for the ring, and is now left with pitifully little to show for it. I was reminded (as I often am) of Michael Mann’s work. Wrestling is for Ramzinski what Mann would call “the elevated experience of his life,” and like Mann’s characters, his passion for it leaves little else in his world intact. He lives in a trailer park and is behind on rent; he relies on neighborhood kids and a stripper named Cassidy (Marisa Tomei) for companionship. He believes that he and Cassidy may have a future together, and the movie illustrates that they do have a lot in common. They’re both in the body business and are both the worse for wear; the time it has bought them is running out. Rourke gives a performance of incredible commitment and believability, to say nothing of its physical aspects. His loneliness, his regrets, his good heart and his bad decisions, Rourke makes them all tangible.
I was almost deterred from giving The Wrestler a perfect score by a number of small factors. The first is Evan Rachel Wood, who is inexplicably popular among both critics and real people. I got tired of her big sad eyes and the camera that never tired of drinking in her good looks in Across the Universe. Here in The Wrestler, she didn’t really have time to annoy me, but it was difficult not to notice that she didn’t really do much. A lot of people have said she’s brilliant; even Mickey Rourke has sung her praises, but whenever I see one of her performances, I see acting and not the character. Perhaps Rourke and others have seen some better movies than I have. Another problem is that at times Randy does things that seem so improbably stupid that I have trouble continuing to sympathize with him. The best example may be when he blows off his daughter to go drinking, then comes crawling back for forgiveness, so soon after regaining her love the first time. You’ll recognize other examples for yourself. What I came to realize though, is that while we may not see the world on Randy Ramzinski’s terms, and he may not behave as we wish he would, we still understand him. Like an underdog sports team, we root for him even when rooting for him is hard. In the end, I was moved by the foolish extent of his dedication, smiling at his self sacrificing bravado. The Wrestler is one of those movies that sounds depressing but isn’t; it enriches you by allowing you to feel for another person’s small triumphs.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Frost/Nixon
3.5/4 stars
Going into this Oscar season, from the time the nominations were announced, I was most enthusiastic about Frost/Nixon. Although it's true that I have an unusual dislike for Ron Howard as a director (I struggle to think of one of his films before this one that I have any affection for), the reteaming of writer Peter Morgan and actor Michael Sheen after their collaboration in the incredible The Queen was something to be excited about. In the end I did like Frost/Nixon quite a bit, but not as much as I wanted to.
Although, true to its title, the film plays as an examination of two characters, it is easily the historical enigma of Richard Nixon that the whole effort is centered on. The subject of the film is the interviews; the subject of the interviews was his tumultuous presidency. Even that was in many ways the final act of a convoluted political career. Frank Langella brings Nixon to life flawlessly, and the true genius of the script is that it allows him to be two things at once. On the one hand, he is the villain of the piece, a chillingly cunning and unrepentant opponent. On the other, he is a lonely and tragic figure. How can you not pity a man who worked so hard for something and lost it due to his own overbearing flaws? Langella is brilliant, in voice, appearance and temperament. He embodies the good and the bad equally, never far from each other, the stubbornness that began as righteous and drifted slowly yet irrevocably in the other direction. Even as Kevin Bacon turns in a distinctly unlikable performance as his chief of staff, it is tempered with an undercurrent of fierce protectiveness. In politics, an admission of wrongdoing on the scale of which Nixon is guilty is career suicide. At the same time, the interviews are his only chance to tell his side of the story, an apology his only opportunity for redemption.
This is where Frost comes in, and Michael Sheen expresses this in his portrayal of the character: while everyone around him wants simply to skewer and ruin the former president, Frost knows his duty as an interviewer is to come to know him on a human level. At the same time, the circumstances of what occurs are such that a conflict arises that neither can take lightly. The moment in which Frost realizes this is the turning point of the film. While Langella gives the outstanding performance of the movie, Morgan's writing and the fine ensemble are excellent in every corner.
The direction is where this movie finds trouble. Like in The Queen, real news footage is used in combination with the dramatization to supply a real, grounded feel. However, whereas in The Queen this gave insight into the perspective of characters who were seeing their every move documented for an angry public, in Frost/Nixon it seems to be an excuse to spoon-feed information or commentary that the movie otherwise can't be bothered with. Unlike this movie, The Queen was never speaking directly to the audience. Here, we sometimes seem to be watching a dramatic film, but other times we're watching a mocumentary, seemingly as it suits the director. The effect is that of a cellophane wrapping around the art of the film: unpleasant, distracting and cheap. While there are some interesting effects as work (the way the interview scenes are framed to move in and out of a television perspective) overall the style seems cluttered and uncertain.
A regrettable amount of this review is Oscar season quibbling. Frost/Nixon is as much worth sitting through as anything else (even compared to some of this year's other candidates) even if it lacks the near-perfection of its excellent predecessor.
Going into this Oscar season, from the time the nominations were announced, I was most enthusiastic about Frost/Nixon. Although it's true that I have an unusual dislike for Ron Howard as a director (I struggle to think of one of his films before this one that I have any affection for), the reteaming of writer Peter Morgan and actor Michael Sheen after their collaboration in the incredible The Queen was something to be excited about. In the end I did like Frost/Nixon quite a bit, but not as much as I wanted to.
Although, true to its title, the film plays as an examination of two characters, it is easily the historical enigma of Richard Nixon that the whole effort is centered on. The subject of the film is the interviews; the subject of the interviews was his tumultuous presidency. Even that was in many ways the final act of a convoluted political career. Frank Langella brings Nixon to life flawlessly, and the true genius of the script is that it allows him to be two things at once. On the one hand, he is the villain of the piece, a chillingly cunning and unrepentant opponent. On the other, he is a lonely and tragic figure. How can you not pity a man who worked so hard for something and lost it due to his own overbearing flaws? Langella is brilliant, in voice, appearance and temperament. He embodies the good and the bad equally, never far from each other, the stubbornness that began as righteous and drifted slowly yet irrevocably in the other direction. Even as Kevin Bacon turns in a distinctly unlikable performance as his chief of staff, it is tempered with an undercurrent of fierce protectiveness. In politics, an admission of wrongdoing on the scale of which Nixon is guilty is career suicide. At the same time, the interviews are his only chance to tell his side of the story, an apology his only opportunity for redemption.
This is where Frost comes in, and Michael Sheen expresses this in his portrayal of the character: while everyone around him wants simply to skewer and ruin the former president, Frost knows his duty as an interviewer is to come to know him on a human level. At the same time, the circumstances of what occurs are such that a conflict arises that neither can take lightly. The moment in which Frost realizes this is the turning point of the film. While Langella gives the outstanding performance of the movie, Morgan's writing and the fine ensemble are excellent in every corner.
The direction is where this movie finds trouble. Like in The Queen, real news footage is used in combination with the dramatization to supply a real, grounded feel. However, whereas in The Queen this gave insight into the perspective of characters who were seeing their every move documented for an angry public, in Frost/Nixon it seems to be an excuse to spoon-feed information or commentary that the movie otherwise can't be bothered with. Unlike this movie, The Queen was never speaking directly to the audience. Here, we sometimes seem to be watching a dramatic film, but other times we're watching a mocumentary, seemingly as it suits the director. The effect is that of a cellophane wrapping around the art of the film: unpleasant, distracting and cheap. While there are some interesting effects as work (the way the interview scenes are framed to move in and out of a television perspective) overall the style seems cluttered and uncertain.
A regrettable amount of this review is Oscar season quibbling. Frost/Nixon is as much worth sitting through as anything else (even compared to some of this year's other candidates) even if it lacks the near-perfection of its excellent predecessor.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
3/4 stars
So, a year or two ago, sometime before there was a separate article on Wikipedia for this movie, I was wasting time on said website, and found my way to the article on the short story upon which the movie is based. It's a strange coincidence that a story written long before I was born should be made into an acclaimed film within such a short time of my reading it. Or maybe not. Anyway, this film shouldn't really be compared to F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story; the overlap of a few significant details only confuses the fact that they are different stories that serve different purposes.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a long film, in the best sense. I commented back in 2006 (in response to, among others, Casino Royale, a 2.5 hour Bond movie) that my attention span for a movie is closer to three hours than two. That was probably an overstatement, but two hour movies do sometimes feel a little slight, and I'm happy to grant a third hour of my time to a film that has a good use for it. I'm also fond of movies that have a slow enough pace that, like a novel, you can see distinct sections in them, begin to feel comfortable with a sense of status quo before the events of the film disrupt it. It sounds odd to refer to a movie that spans 85 years as slow-paced, but pacing isn't about how a movie gets through narrative time, it's about how it gets from the beginning to the end. A long movie, when it's good, allows several episodes their appropriate weight and consideration. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a long, sweeping story, with all the complexity and craftsmanship that that entails. It will draw you in and keep you emotionally engaged with what you're seeing for its entire two and three quarter hours.
CCBB (yeah, I just did that) is the story of two lives, and how they are shared. Both Benjamin Button (portrayed by Brad Pitt with a generous amount of soft spoken charm) and Daisy Fuller (portrayed mostly by Cate Blanchett, although Elle Fanning also has a memorable scene) are old when the film begins. She is looking back from her deathbed on him looking forward into an uncertain future. "I was born old," he says simply at one point. As you no doubt are aware, Benjamin is aging backwards, which makes sharing his life with someone else a tricky proposition. You may also have some idea from the ads, what their solution is ("we meet in the middle"). They both have interesting and eventful lives, and the way the world changes around them is what gives the film its massive scope. I especially liked the symmetry of having the film end on the eve of Hurricane Katrina, suggesting the story of city as well as everything else.
I stated last week that the number of Academy Award nominations for this film surprised me. Now I find it interesting to consider how it seems to be an amalgamation of various past Oscar favorites. I think a lot of viewers will notice that it smacks of Forrest Gump, an unusual man with soft spoken Southern charm. Also, what does that recurring hummingbird motif remind you of? The special effects used to allow Brad Pitt to inhabit various ages of the character reminded me of The Lord of the Rings and its hobbits. It even becomes Magnolia for a minute, in an ill advised car crash sequence. If you want to know why I think this is a good but not a great movie, it's that. Yes it entertained me, yes it engaged me, yes it earned the time it took to watch it, and I would watch it again. But I don't think it's the year's best film. As the hasty and underdeveloped coda ("some people get struck by lightning") suggests, it's a good story, but at the end seems to strain to have been about something. It's trying too hard; its fairytale elements are a bit too earnest, its protagonist too purely good. In short, it is wondrous, but it is not curious.
So, a year or two ago, sometime before there was a separate article on Wikipedia for this movie, I was wasting time on said website, and found my way to the article on the short story upon which the movie is based. It's a strange coincidence that a story written long before I was born should be made into an acclaimed film within such a short time of my reading it. Or maybe not. Anyway, this film shouldn't really be compared to F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story; the overlap of a few significant details only confuses the fact that they are different stories that serve different purposes.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a long film, in the best sense. I commented back in 2006 (in response to, among others, Casino Royale, a 2.5 hour Bond movie) that my attention span for a movie is closer to three hours than two. That was probably an overstatement, but two hour movies do sometimes feel a little slight, and I'm happy to grant a third hour of my time to a film that has a good use for it. I'm also fond of movies that have a slow enough pace that, like a novel, you can see distinct sections in them, begin to feel comfortable with a sense of status quo before the events of the film disrupt it. It sounds odd to refer to a movie that spans 85 years as slow-paced, but pacing isn't about how a movie gets through narrative time, it's about how it gets from the beginning to the end. A long movie, when it's good, allows several episodes their appropriate weight and consideration. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a long, sweeping story, with all the complexity and craftsmanship that that entails. It will draw you in and keep you emotionally engaged with what you're seeing for its entire two and three quarter hours.
CCBB (yeah, I just did that) is the story of two lives, and how they are shared. Both Benjamin Button (portrayed by Brad Pitt with a generous amount of soft spoken charm) and Daisy Fuller (portrayed mostly by Cate Blanchett, although Elle Fanning also has a memorable scene) are old when the film begins. She is looking back from her deathbed on him looking forward into an uncertain future. "I was born old," he says simply at one point. As you no doubt are aware, Benjamin is aging backwards, which makes sharing his life with someone else a tricky proposition. You may also have some idea from the ads, what their solution is ("we meet in the middle"). They both have interesting and eventful lives, and the way the world changes around them is what gives the film its massive scope. I especially liked the symmetry of having the film end on the eve of Hurricane Katrina, suggesting the story of city as well as everything else.
I stated last week that the number of Academy Award nominations for this film surprised me. Now I find it interesting to consider how it seems to be an amalgamation of various past Oscar favorites. I think a lot of viewers will notice that it smacks of Forrest Gump, an unusual man with soft spoken Southern charm. Also, what does that recurring hummingbird motif remind you of? The special effects used to allow Brad Pitt to inhabit various ages of the character reminded me of The Lord of the Rings and its hobbits. It even becomes Magnolia for a minute, in an ill advised car crash sequence. If you want to know why I think this is a good but not a great movie, it's that. Yes it entertained me, yes it engaged me, yes it earned the time it took to watch it, and I would watch it again. But I don't think it's the year's best film. As the hasty and underdeveloped coda ("some people get struck by lightning") suggests, it's a good story, but at the end seems to strain to have been about something. It's trying too hard; its fairytale elements are a bit too earnest, its protagonist too purely good. In short, it is wondrous, but it is not curious.
In Bruges
3/4 stars
In Bruges is both a comedy and a tragedy; it's like a Guy Ritchie movie if people actually cared about the consequences of their actions. The comedy is Ritchiesque, invoking the rapid and irreverent banter of his Lock, Stock... or Snatch. But it is effectively tempered by director Martin McDonagh's somber contemplation of the city itself, and its use as a symbol of guilt. Colin Farrell plays Ray, a hitman whose first job has gone horribly wrong. He is sent to Bruges (it's in Belgium) to lay low, and hates every minute of it. He can't wait to get back to the real world, and although we are assured by the camera (and some of the characters) that it is a breathtaking, fairytale place, Farrell can't stand it. The movie is a comedy because the characters must laugh as a respite from sorrow, and because life is random and unpredictable. It is a tragedy for the same reasons.
Although there is a somewhat ineffective romantic subplot with Clémence Poésy, the main performances are by Farrell, the sturdy Brendan Gleeson as his partner, and the dynamic Ralph Fiennes as the boss. Farrell has the hardest work; his character is an extrovert who races from comical mischief to suicidal grief several times in each scene. Gleeson's character is more reserved, less emotionally involved, but he too has baggage and heavy decisions to make. Even Fiennes, though his character is a problem for the movie, executes well what he has been given, revealing the humanity behind an outwardly menacing character.
The movie sees Ray find his way back to the desire to live. Bruges represents the purgatory he is trying to escape, between life and death. The symbolism is rich, but not overbearing, much of the Christian analogy delivered seamlessly through the culture of the city itself. Where the movie falls short is in the conception of two characters, the woman and the boss. Poésy does everything she's supposed to, but the affair just feels peripheral. The script (by McDonagh) is trying to tell us that her love could be redemption, and Ray certainly sees it as such; what we get instead is the impression that the lure of sex is enough to make Ray forget that he should be feeling guilty. Fiennes presents two problems. For one, the relationship between his character and Gleeson's is well developed, but distracts from the arc of the movie. The second is a plot twist which I won't detail, but which is intended to bring the movie neatly together, and instead turns it into a farce, and reduces everything that has come before.
McDonagh, in his first full length effort, has inspired ideas and proficient technique. He has the misfortune that his few mistakes are noticeable and frustrating, and disrupt the balance of a fine film. Nonetheless, what he gets right and what he draws out of his actors is worth seeing.
In Bruges is both a comedy and a tragedy; it's like a Guy Ritchie movie if people actually cared about the consequences of their actions. The comedy is Ritchiesque, invoking the rapid and irreverent banter of his Lock, Stock... or Snatch. But it is effectively tempered by director Martin McDonagh's somber contemplation of the city itself, and its use as a symbol of guilt. Colin Farrell plays Ray, a hitman whose first job has gone horribly wrong. He is sent to Bruges (it's in Belgium) to lay low, and hates every minute of it. He can't wait to get back to the real world, and although we are assured by the camera (and some of the characters) that it is a breathtaking, fairytale place, Farrell can't stand it. The movie is a comedy because the characters must laugh as a respite from sorrow, and because life is random and unpredictable. It is a tragedy for the same reasons.
Although there is a somewhat ineffective romantic subplot with Clémence Poésy, the main performances are by Farrell, the sturdy Brendan Gleeson as his partner, and the dynamic Ralph Fiennes as the boss. Farrell has the hardest work; his character is an extrovert who races from comical mischief to suicidal grief several times in each scene. Gleeson's character is more reserved, less emotionally involved, but he too has baggage and heavy decisions to make. Even Fiennes, though his character is a problem for the movie, executes well what he has been given, revealing the humanity behind an outwardly menacing character.
The movie sees Ray find his way back to the desire to live. Bruges represents the purgatory he is trying to escape, between life and death. The symbolism is rich, but not overbearing, much of the Christian analogy delivered seamlessly through the culture of the city itself. Where the movie falls short is in the conception of two characters, the woman and the boss. Poésy does everything she's supposed to, but the affair just feels peripheral. The script (by McDonagh) is trying to tell us that her love could be redemption, and Ray certainly sees it as such; what we get instead is the impression that the lure of sex is enough to make Ray forget that he should be feeling guilty. Fiennes presents two problems. For one, the relationship between his character and Gleeson's is well developed, but distracts from the arc of the movie. The second is a plot twist which I won't detail, but which is intended to bring the movie neatly together, and instead turns it into a farce, and reduces everything that has come before.
McDonagh, in his first full length effort, has inspired ideas and proficient technique. He has the misfortune that his few mistakes are noticeable and frustrating, and disrupt the balance of a fine film. Nonetheless, what he gets right and what he draws out of his actors is worth seeing.
Friday, January 23, 2009
The Aviator
3.5/4 stars
One of the thoughts I kept having during The Aviator was how lucky Leonardo DiCaprio was to have gotten the role. He gives a great performance, maybe his best, but it doesn’t change how fortunate he was that Scorsese saw the great actor in him and gave him this chance to bring it out. The Aviator is one of those actor’s movies, built around a single performance as its centerpiece. DiCaprio delivers the drive and obsession of Howard Hughes, and his powerful neuroses. He manages to unify the two prevalent images of the man, his highs and lows, into one character on the screen. “I care a great deal about aviation,” he says at one point, in an attempt to explain himself, “It is the great joy of my life.” We know what Hughes cares about, and we know what he is afraid of thanks to an opening scene in which his mother warns him strongly about the dangers of disease. We also see why the one gives him some relief from the other; Scorsese illustrates how from above, everything seems like a miniature version of itself, simpler and cleaner.
The rest is Scorsese putting it into context. This seems like a slight way to appreciate such rich work, but it seems to be how the film wants to be viewed. The cinematography mixes retro experimentation (limited color palates, static long shots) with more modern techniques depending on the specific needs of the particular scene. As a period piece, the settings and costumes are thorough and engrossing, and a small army of background characters fills in the spaces.
The major flaw of the film is however that it fails to answer why. We see Hughes personality, illustrated brilliantly, but we don’t understand it. The opening scene mentioned earlier is about all we get by way of motivation for the compulsions that tear Hughes’ life apart. We understand his fascination with flight, but his forceful personality, his simultaneous indulgence and disregard for wealth… these things pose a question that is never answered. I understand that as a biopic, the film must be careful about what it tries to answer with speculation, but when so much speculation is necessarily present anyway, reticence towards completing the task of transforming the person into the character seems somewhat silly.
Still, it’s wasteful to poke holes in such a spectacle. As a show of acting and direction, The Aviator outpaces its worth as a script. But acting and direction are worthwhile crafts, and this is an enjoyable display.
One of the thoughts I kept having during The Aviator was how lucky Leonardo DiCaprio was to have gotten the role. He gives a great performance, maybe his best, but it doesn’t change how fortunate he was that Scorsese saw the great actor in him and gave him this chance to bring it out. The Aviator is one of those actor’s movies, built around a single performance as its centerpiece. DiCaprio delivers the drive and obsession of Howard Hughes, and his powerful neuroses. He manages to unify the two prevalent images of the man, his highs and lows, into one character on the screen. “I care a great deal about aviation,” he says at one point, in an attempt to explain himself, “It is the great joy of my life.” We know what Hughes cares about, and we know what he is afraid of thanks to an opening scene in which his mother warns him strongly about the dangers of disease. We also see why the one gives him some relief from the other; Scorsese illustrates how from above, everything seems like a miniature version of itself, simpler and cleaner.
The rest is Scorsese putting it into context. This seems like a slight way to appreciate such rich work, but it seems to be how the film wants to be viewed. The cinematography mixes retro experimentation (limited color palates, static long shots) with more modern techniques depending on the specific needs of the particular scene. As a period piece, the settings and costumes are thorough and engrossing, and a small army of background characters fills in the spaces.
The major flaw of the film is however that it fails to answer why. We see Hughes personality, illustrated brilliantly, but we don’t understand it. The opening scene mentioned earlier is about all we get by way of motivation for the compulsions that tear Hughes’ life apart. We understand his fascination with flight, but his forceful personality, his simultaneous indulgence and disregard for wealth… these things pose a question that is never answered. I understand that as a biopic, the film must be careful about what it tries to answer with speculation, but when so much speculation is necessarily present anyway, reticence towards completing the task of transforming the person into the character seems somewhat silly.
Still, it’s wasteful to poke holes in such a spectacle. As a show of acting and direction, The Aviator outpaces its worth as a script. But acting and direction are worthwhile crafts, and this is an enjoyable display.
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