Mstarz-99shaftesburyave

The Descendants

The Descendants

Directed by Alexander Payne

with George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Amara Miller

2011

I did buy a DVD of Sideways. I don’t know if I’d buy The Descendants.

A fatal motorboat accident leaves Matt King’s wife Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie) into an ultimate state of coma. The event brings Matt (George Clooney) to face much more than he expected: his responsibility towards his own daughters, Alexandra (Shailene Woodley) and Scottie (Amara Miller), and the discovery of having been cheated on by his wife. Significantly in the background, there is also another issue: Matt has to decide what to do with the virgin land his family has owned for generations and which most of them want now to sell for profit.

The plot has almost everything expected from a twentieth century drama: a fatal accident, two teenager daughters out of control, a parent who has been absent because too busy at work, risk of divorce and undercover cheating. For once, however, there might be something good about cliché. If there is one thing that the movie achieves is banality understood in its most positive sense. No element of the plot is taken to its extreme, no emotion is overdone and no permanent solution is found. Comic and tragic alternate without notice. Things transform, but do not change.

Maybe it is for this very reason that George Clooney performance was found to be so outstanding. In The Descendants Clooney comes across less as a superstar on screen, than as a real man in life. One waits for him to somehow succeed and grab his happy ending, while instead he barely, as the character says, manages ‘to keep [his] head above water’.

What stayed with me the most, probably, is the setting. On the Hawaiian Islands the characters are surrounded by the Ocean as they are by their problems. The movie opens and closes with two water scenes: the smiley face of Elizabeth over the waves – the only image given of her before the coma – and the lingering of three flowers necklaces over the water - the remains of her funerary ceremony. The tropical nature, the beaches at twilight, the windows and doors of the houses constantly open create in the movie a languorous atmosphere in which the characters stroll half lost, half inured.

In line with About Schmidt (2002) and Sideways (2005), The Descendants seeks golden dust in mud. Director Alexander Payne seems particularly interested in characters who find in troubles a certain liberating awareness, if not happiness. In the light of events, the pressing decision Matt has to take regarding the land acts as the counting of nines of the accident aftermaths.

However tempting might be to look for a moral, I think the movie is at its best in its lack of one. Leaving the cinema I was left with a bit of stomachache. But I didn’t know exactly when it came or who to blame.

fiamma

Read User's Comments0

J. Edgar

6:19 PM | Labels: Biography-Drama

J. Edgar

Directed by Clint Eastwood
Written by Dustin Lance Black

with Leonardo DiCaprio, Armie Hammer, Naomi Watts

2011

Given that you can normally set your watch by the character arcs in a Clint Eastwoodfilm, it’s odd that the immediate criticism of his biopic of J. Edgar Hoover is that there isn’t enough of a story. I don’t insist on a film being narrative-based or anything, but I do think that if a filmmaker chooses to make a film based on themes and ideas rather than a strong story structure, they need to make doubly sure those ideas are focused and well presented. And while Eastwood and writer Dustin Lance Black do make the FBI founder a suitably intriguing prospect, their critique is loosely arranged around a messy flashback structure that doesn’t really give the audience anything to hang on to. It’s full of perfectly sculpted individual scenes, but there’s no rise and fall of tension: each plot point is played at more or less the same level and just fails to generate any emotional response. Apart from the narrative difficulties it presents, the forty-year period dealt with in the film also leads to some dodgy make up jobs: Leonardo DiCaprio as Hoover is covered pretty well (although I’m told by someone with a better eye than me that his hands were crap), but his right-hand man, Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer), is another story: even the stroke can’t explain away the fact he looks like he’s wearing someone else’s face. It's a slightly tacky feature that doesn't help you engage.

The cast is solid but straightforward, with DiCaprio the only one given much to do. He plays Hoover from the ages of 24 to 77, and through him we are shown a socially awkward visionary, a closeted and inexperienced homosexual, and an egotistical political zealot, with all three elements being given the old-age-reflective treatment as he writes his memoirs. The film follows two main strands of Hoover's life: his expansion of the FBI, and his personal relationship with Clyde Tolson. His friendship with Tolson is given precedence, as a romantic attraction between the two – suspected but unconfirmed in real life – is brought to the fore and serves as the film's emotional centre. While largely speculative and therefore quite likely exaggerated, I thought their relationship was nicely played: there’s a false moment when, prior to their one moment of complete openness, the point that they’re gay is carefully underlined with some bitching about tasteless shoes, but generally it’s all kept very low-key, and touchingly affectionate. His situation with his mother is another matter, though. I don’t know anything about the real-life relationship, but in this film it comes across as the stereotypical overreliance on a mother figure that seems to prefigure homosexuality in a lot of Hollywood affair. If it’s accurate I guess it’s excusable; what’s definitely not accurate is the ridiculous scene after her passing, in which he comes over all Norman Bates, putting on one of her dresses and sobbing on the floor in the foetal position.

While it makes for a lack of focus, the film’s care in covering both Hoover’s professional and private life, and interweaving them, actually leads to what I admired most about it. Though vigorously principled and insistent on the moral and professional character of the Bureau, Hoover’s greatest flaw is made to be his imposition of a personal code under the cover of protecting a historic way of life. His preoccupation with threats to the American way, initially from anarchists, Bolsheviks and the like, are seen to spread so that anyone protesting the status quo (Martin Luther King, for example), is deemed a subversive “radical”. Although Hoover at one point dismisses McCarthy as “an opportunist”, it is easy to draw a parallel between their similarly reductive notions of freedom, even if we accept that his motives were more pure. Eastwood’s Hoover is sympathetic in his eagerness and awkwardness, and the film is clear in stating the important progress in forensics behind which he was a driving force. But it also suggests a blind spot when it comes to the compatibility of his vision with the type of society he supposedly wanted to preserve. There’s a moment in the film when a line of Martin Luther King’s is given prominence, about the need for America to “rise up, and live by the meaning of its creed”, and the idea that the US Constitution is meant to enshrine everybody’s rights is obviously one still working its way through certain sections of American society. The film is at its best when it deals with this dichotomy in Hoover’s career, and ultimately paints him as a paranoid old man, doubting whether he has made his beloved country better, or worse.

Tom

Read User's Comments0

Tatsumi

1:42 PM | Labels: Animation

Tatsumi

Directed by Eric Khoo

with Tetsuya Bessho, Motoko Gollent, Yoshihito Tatsumi

2011

Tatsumi’s ideal audience would be a manga reader. Yet, the movie has something to offer even to those who are new to its world.

The feature opens with a prologue-homage to the manga artist Osamu Tezuka: the hero who animated Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s desire to become an accomplished artist when he was still a teenager. From there the narrative unfolds on different levels. The narration of Tatsumi’s life is interwoven with some of his stories, as well as with Japan’s history of recovery after Second World War. Two growing trajectories are sketched: as Tatsumi finds his voice and style as an artist, Japan rebuilds its economy and society, while the characters of the stories somehow lay in between the two.

Cinematographically Tatsumi feeds into a genre which is becoming more and more distinct, placing itself next to Persepolis (2007) and Waltz with Bashir (2008). What these movies propose is a very distinct type of animation which set them aside from the smooth wonders of the most advanced Pixaresque digital animation, as well as classical Disney’s cartoons. To respect their graphic integrity, they resort to a fragmented, simplified, yet inventive animation which works as a reminder of the representational nature of the image. In this way the artist is always present: he leads you through the story by (his) hand.

In Tatsumi this is all the more compelling since it is the artist’s voice which partially narrates the story behind the images, as if he were there with you, turning the pages of his works, as well as of his life. Each level of narration has its own graphic language: simple lines and colours accompany the life of Tatsumi; brown paper and black ink the history of Japan; denser and varied hatchings the stories written by the artist along the way. The all pervasive graphic quality of the film somehow reflects the functioning of the artist’s mind, who, since a child, obsessively translated his perception of the world into drawn images.

Yet, the variety of styles does something more than translating the virtuosity of Tatsumi’s pen. Through juxtaposition, it tangibly shows how deeply graphics make – rather than illustrate – the story, setting its tone, its pace and its mood. In fact where the film fails, it succeeds at the same time: it leaves you wishing you had read the books, rather than seen their animation.

In its plot, however, the movie captures an important moment in the history of manga as a genre. With his stories, Tatsumi created a new type of manga: the gekiga. The stories featured in the movie are far away from the colourful world of monsters and superheroes that one normally associates with mangas. They depict the misery, the tragedies and the banality of normal life; their characters are so human that they sweat, they pee and they bleed. If not for a specific interest in manga, Tatsumi is worth seeing for the stories it features. They will take you into a Japan that you might not know, touching on some issues which go beyond culture, history and comics books.

fiamma

Read User's Comments0

Shame

5:40 AM | Labels: Drama

Shame

Directed by Steve McQueen

with Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, James Badge Dale

2011

There is only one thing more surprising than Steve McQueen’s talent: its effortlessness.

Shame portrays the life of Brandon, a successful New Yorker in his thirties, who spends his life between a busy office high up in a skyscraper, a neat modern flat and swanky nightclubs. Behind the elegant, reserved and successful persona he maintains in public there is however a sex addict. The unexpected arrival of his rootless sister Sissy seems to unravel Brandon’s work-sex routine in an unwelcomed, and yet perhaps secretly desired way. Her call for affection, help and attention disturbs Brandon’s materialistic, lonely and detached approach to women in a way that intensifies, as much as it questions, his sexual compulsions. Almost verging onto the tragedy, the movie nevertheless ends with a ray of hope.

The script, co-written by McQueen and Abi Morgan, is a beautiful exercise in balance between frankness and respect. In their directness, the scenes do not spare the viewer, and yet judgement is avoided. Shame builds up like a wave: from the small, unsettling hints of Brandon’s daily routine at the beginning, to his final, giddy run into perdition, the viewer is slowly drawn into a hellish and growing vortex of compulsion and void. But while sex should be about pleasure, Brandon is someone who suffers. Many of the sex sequences are introduced as flashbacks in the character’s mind: as some bewildering reminiscences of a life that happens out of his control.

Michael Fassbender subtly captures the reality of a person who is both the partner in crime and the victim of his own addictions. He gave to the character a powerful presence, letting leak through however all his weakness. In the sex scenes, Fassbender remarkably explores the thin line which divides pleasure and pain, orgasm and agony: often a shadow merges the mark of ecstasy on his face into a deadly mask of anguish and misery. Carey Mulligan, in the role of the sister, perfectly recreates the image of an exuberant, lively bohemian girl, who is in reality lost and hurt. In her rendering of the character, Mulligan works perfectly in accordance with Fassbender, amplifying Brandon’s inner feelings. Her performance of New York New York creates an oasis of sincerity in the movie. The blues arrangement gives to the lyrics a new significance and makes them sinisterly resonate with the life of both Brandon and Sissy.

The greater success of the movie is to make the audience sympathize with Brandon. Just as you witness to his perdition, you wait for his redemption. His perversions do not fully obfuscate his human side: when he finds himself impotent with the only woman he actually knows it is a personal, as well as physical failure. Through the character of the sister, and subtly along the movie, it is suggested that a dark past is what lingers on the two siblings, implying that Shame is not as much a movie about sin, as it is about atonement. Redeeming sex-addiction from the sphere of lust, immorality and taboo, Shame shows its engaged dimension, treating sex-addiction as a serious malaise which deserves attention.

The movie, however, escapes any preaching tone, asserting above all its artistic and poetic dimension. The New York setting is used at its best in order to swiftly mixing the trivial and base with the glittering and glamorous. The soundtrack, in which J.S. Bach figures prominently, gives to certain scenes an epic, remote quality powerfully in disaccord with Brandon’s base and materially sensorial actions.

With Shame, McQueen reassessed, after Hunger, his ability to dissolve the most violent and dense scenes into poignant abstract images of moving lines and colours. The sequence of the threesome is a real visual bliss: a vibration of curves, lines and golden light which deploys itself in front of our eyes with violence, elegance and beautiful sadness.

fiamma

Read User's Comments0

The Artist

11:18 AM | Labels: Comedy-Drama, Romance

The Artist

Directed by Michel Hazanavicius
Written by Michel Hazanavicius

with Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, John Goodman

2011

Is Michel Hazanavicius’ clever, modern-day silent film a gorgeous homage to early Hollywood, or a gimmicky exercise in nostalgia? Opening among the studios in the late 20s, The Artistfollows an old-school film icon as he experiences the transition to sound cinema. George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is a hybrid of Douglas Fairbanks’ adventuring swagger and Rudolph Valentino’s sexy Euro-mystique. Also in the mix is James Cromwell’s faithful valet Clifton, channeling a bit of Erich von Stroheim in Sunset Boulevard (although grandfatherly instead of creepy); John Goodman as a blustering studio head; and Bérénice Bejo as a young dancer who gets to live the Hollywood dream, catapulted to stardom through an accidental encounter with the charmed Valentin.

All the highest-profile films released during awards season have at least one showy lead role, and ironically an actor being restricted vocally is a prize instead of a hindrance, if they’re good enough. Jean Dujardin is, and he wonderfully replicates the physicality of the silent film stars without ever reducing Valentin to a caricature. He does get to ham it up in his starring roles within the film, in the manner of an actual silent film star, but also has to give a modern performance of relative restraint, still without the use of his voice. The film is well cast throughout, with all the main roles astutely assigned with an eye towards physical presence rather than mere expressiveness. There’s even a cameo from Malcolm MacDowell, although given his history of mad faces it’s a shame he doesn’t really do anything.

The silent film aesthetic is remarkably sustained, and I suspect how you take it is key to the opening question. Given that it doesn’t add anything concrete to the story I can imagine it seeming to some like a smarter version of ScaryEpicDisaster Movie, just an exercise in various tropes and clichés of the silent era arranged around a charming but simple story. I can understand this point of view, except I think Hazanavicius did it so well that the conceit becomes an evocation of silent Hollywood, instead of just a stylistic quirk. The film isn’t entirely without diegetic sound: it is used in a dream sequence and, in a nice payoff, at the very end, and this thoughtful use of the silent/sound effect to enhance the film saves it, I think, from only being fun. As much as it adheres to the traditions of the silent era (even being presented in 4:3), The Artist could not have been made during that time: the story takes full advantage of modern picture quality, and the vocals are replaced by facial expressions to a degree of subtlety that, unless the whole thing had been shot in close up, would have been impossible for contemporary cameras and film stock.

Comparing it again to the rash of genre-spoof movies that still won’t just stop, the various references throughout The Artist are done with far more subtlety and flair than in those films. You are only reminded of Norma Desmond when you watch Valentin ascending or descending the curved staircase in his home; the film is never so crass as to actually recreate anything. Even the scene where a canine actor (that’s the last time I’ll use that phrase) saves someone from a real-life house fire comes across as pleasingly ironic instead of contrived. Having said that, there’s no way I recognised everything, and given that Hazanavicius probably knows silent cinema inside-out by now, maybe it is just a sequence of references that hardly anyone can actually see.

I always enjoy films where either everyone’s kind of a bad guy or nobody really is, and The Artist falls squarely into the latter category. The main character relives the fate that Fairbanks and many others saw through the advent of sound, at first dismissive, then bewildered and rejected as their voices were found wanting compared with their silent image. Yet although there is a nod to the heartless profit-mechanism at the core of Hollywood, Valentin is always the victim of circumstance rather than betrayal: his producer wants to help him, but is tied by what the public wants, and the girl on the street to whom he gave a break wants nothing more than to repay the debt in kind. All is tied up neatly in a perfect-scenario happy ending, which looks forward to the possibilities of a new era instead of dwelling on the loss of an old one. The cosiness might not be for everyone, but I thought the film worked well, at its most basic level a classic fall-and-redemption story in which the hero recognizes his folly and arrogance, and is rewarded with a second chance.
Tom

Read User's Comments0

My Week with Marilyn

11:13 AM | Labels: Biography-Drama

My Week with Marilyn

Directed by Simon Curtis
Written by Adrian Hodges

with Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, Kenneth Branagh

2011

This is a film about acting. Adapted by Adrian Hodges from Colin Clark’s diary accounts of his first experience of the film industry, it is an odd romance between a star-struck apprentice and an insecure older woman, unhappy with the face her runaway success has presented to the world. Desperate to move out of the shadow of his “over-achieving” family (his dad was art-historian Kenneth, and his older brother future writer and politician Alan), he pursues a career in the industry after being promised a job on Laurence Olivier’s new film, The Prince and the Showgirl. The female lead in this film is to be Marilyn Monroe, and through his role as third assistant director (read: assistant to everybody), Clark ends up first in the star’s confidence, then as a doomed toyboy she clings to during an increasingly problematic shoot.

Apart from a bit of perspective-switching at the outset, between Monroe singing live and that performance being watched on a cinema screen by a captivated audience, director Simon Curtis sits back and allows the actors to make the film. As Clark, Eddie Redmayne holds the centre impressively. He comes across as capable and well-connected, but more naïve than he’d care to realise, and helps make a potentially contrived relationship believable through sheer good-natured ambition, balancing a desire to impress his superiors and improve his own prospects with being genuinely concerned for Monroe’s well-being. Without the essential decency Redmayne gives him, his dalliance with Monroe could have come across as a bit exploitative and starfucker-y, but he (with Curtis) manages to preserve the fact that if anyone is being exploited, it is him.

Understandably, Michelle Williams’ performance as Monroe is the one getting all the attention, and without wanting to regurgitate everyone else’s praise, she is excellent. Marilyn Monroe was a famously complex woman, capable of being utterly captivating but crazy-unreliable; a sex symbol concerned that that was all she could be. Her insecurity shines through in the film: we see her desire to be taken seriously in the copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses sitting in her dressing room; in her foray into method acting; and to a degree in her entire marriage to Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott – brilliant). What is most impressive, however, is the way Williams manages to communicate a single character who is constantly playing different roles herself; not just channeling the on-screen Monroe at her charming best, but a skittish, nervous Monroe completely intimidated by those she sees as ‘proper’ actors; a confident star deftly dealing with a room full of press and admirers; and, perhaps subconsciously, a manipulative sex kitten.

This is one of those films in which a bunch of past icons are played by a bunch of modern icons, so there’s always the risk of it becoming an impersonation-fest, but by-and-large My Week with Marilyn avoids this by using its high-profile characters carefully, and ensuring they aren’t shoehorned in for the sake of it. Kenneth Branaghas Laurence Olivier shines. His performance is not as complex as Williams’, but it doesn’t need to be. He isn’t there to get under Olivier’s skin but to embody him, and his persona is used to great effect to critique that of Monroe. Through Branagh we see the resentment Monroe’s colleagues could feel towards her, and the impatience old-fashioned theatre-types had with the Method; but also his own insecurity at the sheer charisma she just had, capable of blowing him off the screen seemingly without effort. The one example who doesn’t quite sit well is that of Dame Sybil Thorndike (played by Dame Judi Dench), who spends her time in the film’s first half being ridiculously lovely to everyone, handing out warm scarves and resolving union disputes, and counterbalancing Olivier’s peevish impatience with Monroe through tolerance and understanding, only to drift out of the story in the second half. This lack of resolution serves as a microcosm of the film as a whole, in that the situation we are given is so unusual and interesting in itself that the story fails to transcend the fact that it just ended when the film project did, leaving us with a slightly tacked-on “And here’s what I learned” voiceover.

Ultimately, though, this film succeeds through being more than it needs to be. The various impersonation-roles revolve around – and feed – a central performance which goes further than impersonation and achieves a genuine character study, while the slightly scandalous subject matter disguises a very low-key and chaste romance, in the end more of a coming of age story for the protagonist than anything else. While the character of Colin Clark seems a bit of a blank slate compared with the eccentrics and legends surrounding him, the filmmakers’ best move is to never lose sight of the fact that we are viewing events through his eyes: the chaos of a film set; the tension between long experience and inherent talent; and the contradictions between star personas and personal identity. Michelle Williams might steal the show, but she’s given a good show to steal.
Tom

Read User's Comments0

Dreams of A Life

4:05 PM | Labels: Documentary

Dreams of A Life

Directed by Carol Morley

with Zawe Ashton, Neelam Bakshi and Lee Colley

2011

Dreams of A Life revealed itself to be less chilling and hypnotizing than its trailer had suggested.

All that was left of Joyce Vincent when she was found in her apartment, three years after her death, was a skeleton in front of the television. Although the story appeared in many newspapers little was discovered about the circumstances of the woman's death or even her identity. After five years of research, tracing down friends and family members, piecing together evidences and memories, director Carol Morley has compiled a half-documentary, half-dramatized portrait of Joyce Vincent.

The feature alternates shots of interviewed friends and acquaintances (strangely enough no names or details of the kind of tie they had with Joyce are given), with (recreated?) scenes of the drastic cleaning of the apartment after the finding and dramatized scenes from Joyce’s life. The movie starts with a striking sequence: Joyce’s friends are given a copy of newspaper presenting the news of her finding and for the first time they this is the Joyce they have known. From there, Morley uses their memories to reconstruct in images her story: her childhood, her time at school, her various boyfriends, her assumed abuse and final fall into isolation.

The editing of the interviews does a good job in bringing out the contradictions between different accounts, letting the viewer to deal with the issue of the inevitable biased knowledge one has of others. The soundtrack song ‘My Smile is Just a Frown’, on which actress Zowe Ashton, playing Joyce, gives a remarkable performance, seems to perfectly sum up the point of the documentary: behind the solar and friendly Joyce there was a suffering person, who finally chose isolation for herself. This also raises the question of responsibility when it comes down to the interviewed people: why did they not realise?

At first, the reconstructed dramatized scenes of the movie help creating a charming, yet mysterious representation of Joyce Vincent. At length, however, they end up losing their power, blatantly satisfying the viewer's thirst for images which, had it been left yielding, would have created a more intense, tantalizing mental image of the absent character. The only two media records of Joyce found by the director – a recorded tape and the last scene – were powerful enough to have stood alone in the feature. They also retrospectively made the acted scenes look like an easy way out of the lack of firm information.

One wonders why Morley decided to dedicate a good half of the feature to these acted scenes, rather than recounting her own, personal, almost obsessive research on Joyce's life and personality. From time to time, the camera swipes over a great amount of notes, documents and records, which are nevertheless never explicitly integrated into the feature. They sometimes seem to carry more information than what is given in the feature, leaving the viewer wondering why nothing is made out of them.

Dreams of A Life is at its best in its real documentary moments, but the dramatized part of it ends up having the upper hand on the viewer’s mind. What one is left with, at the end of the feature, is a vague idea of who Joyce Vincent might have been. This idea, however, seems to be less one’s own, than Morley’s. I wish I could have left the movie mulling over what I just listened to. Instead, images of a team of hygiene service cleaning Joyce’s apartment kept sweeping into my mind.

fiamma

Read User's Comments0

Mstarz-99shaftesburyave

Popular Posts

Blogger templates

Blogger news

Blogroll

Categories

Archives

The Descendants

J. Edgar

Tatsumi

Shame

The Artist

My Week with Marilyn

Dreams of A Life