Joy (David O. Russell, 2015)

Ms. Deeds

David O. Russell's Joy (2015)--about Joy Mangano, creator of the Miracle Mop and early diva of the QVC cable network--is an interesting biopic in that it isn't. According to an article in Vanity Fair the multimillionairess kept most details of her life a guarded secret--what little the public knows is carefully doled out to form a manicured image of the woman. When the idea was suggested to Ms. Mangano that she tell her story, a script (by Annie Mumolo) was commissioned that focused less on her early life and more on the development of the mop, Joy's first real success. When Russell came on board he submitted an alternate proposal: a fictionalization of her life, with fact and fantasy artfully blended. 

The best of 2013

Counting down, the in my book best films of 2013:

10. Post Tenebras Lux, Carlos Reygadas, 2012

Not a big fan of the distortion effect used around the edges of the frame in the exterior scenes (Gerardo de Leon did the same thing in his Banawe, and it felt and still is a silly gimmick that obscures otherwise gorgeous images) but Carlos Reygadas' semi-autobiographical film told in the style of Luis Bunuel with a generous helping of David Lynch is a fascinating anti-narrative. It does speak of patriarchal anger and spousal passivity and how one enables the other (demonstrated in an erotic interlude that takes place in a sauna, where the rooms are named after artists and philosophers) and of children's dreams portending quiet apocalypses (cows surround a little girl, lowing; the sky literally rains blood) but to pin Reygadas' work down to anything more definite is to risk looking silly, even wrong; this is a Rorschach blot of a film that you interpret at your peril. 

9. The Search for Weng Weng, Andrew Leavold, 2007

No one loves a film more than a cinephile, and few love Philippine cinema more, apparently, than Andrew Leavold, owner of the late Trash Video (it's closed since), an Australian specialty store that traded in cult and bizarre titles. Leavold called his establishment 'Trash,' but that's to entice his customers; it's clear from his debut documentary that he really means 'treasure,' and he treasures few films as he does Eddie Nicart's For Y'ur Height Only (1981), featuring the one and only Weng Weng, a 2' 9” actor reportedly named after a Filipino drink--so much so Leavold spent seven years to bring his film to the (big, small, video) screen.

Mind you, For Y'ur Height Only isn't in the tradition of Lino Brocka or Ishmael Bernal; the movie was meant to parody the James Bond flicks and was produced on a budget tinier than its diminutive star. But what Leavold reveals in his prodigiously affectionate piece of cinejournalism is that there are arcane pleasures to be found in this more disreputable branch of Philippine cinema (among others, that Weng Weng was a pretty good martial artist who consistently delivered a vicious roundhouse kick, and that he wooed onscreen some of the more beautiful actresses in the industry, in various stages of undress), not to mention drama and pathos galore (Weng Weng was never properly paid for the millions he made his producers, and died in relative obscurity). It's as if Leavold were practicing a paraphrase of Jean-Luc Godard's dictum: the best way to pay tribute to a beloved movie (and the wild and rollicking cinema behind it) is, in effect, to make another movie.

8. Fruitvale Station, Ryan Coogler, 2013

Coogler's docudrama, about Oscar Grant lll's very last day before he is shot by the San Francisco transit police on New Years' Day, 2009, may be manipulative--it adds details that help soften the outlines of the youth's hard-luck life--but it's still powerful testament to the fragility of a young black man's life in modern America.

7. To the Wonder, Terence Malick, 2012

Not as expansive in scope and intense in feeling as his Tree of Life (2011) and he still hasn't found the sense of humor he lost not long after making Badlands (1973), but Malick's latest does inspire the film's eponymous emotion, if you don't happen to insist on straightforward narratives and clear character motivations. Gorgeous cinematography and vague voiceovers are par for Malick's works, of course, but here the vagueness hints at people who are unhappy and can't express exactly why they're unhappy--and this lack of eloquence, this inability to communicate may be key to their dilemma. Easy to label this as a pretty picture with pretentious ambitions, but the sight of Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Rachel McAdams and Javier Bardem aching to reach out to each other and failing to make contact is a sight a touch too disturbing to simply dismiss. Not major Malick, but better than most Hollywood productions out there.

6. American Hustle, David O. Russell, 2013

Not as gritty as his The Fighter, or as imaginatively idiosyncratic as his I Heart Huckabees (in my opinion his best work to date), but David O. Russell's semi-fictional take on the Abscam affair is funny, sexy, and not a little poignant: the character sketch of a con man (Christian Bale)--his physically and morally repugnant aspects as well as his somewhat mystifying appeal--is worth the price of admission. Shot in Russell's signature hand-held style (with thankfully minimum shakiness) and stitched together to Russell's distinctively nervy rhythms, the film includes Jennifer Lawrence and Jeremy Renner in star turns, and Amy Adams as Bale's faux English aristocrat mistress (my favorite performance in the picture). It's lightweight Russell that resembles too closely Scorsese back in the '70s but still worth the watch.

5. Iskalawags, Keith Deligero, 2013

Taking a page off of Jean Vigo's Zero for Conduct and possibly Mario O'Hara's Pangarap ng Puso (Demons), Deligero's bildungsroman has something of their experimental, freewheeling spirit. A group of youths embarks on a series of often hilarious, usually profane, sometimes sensual escapades, and along the way Deligero unleashes a barrage of cinematic no-budget tricks and surreal images--an impromptu re-enactment of a Filipino action sequence; a chicken massacre; a blackboard covered with spermatozoa--giving us one of the most exciting and original films of the year.

4. The Wolf of Wall Street, Martin Scorsese, 2013

Call it Scorsese's Inferno: on the surface a three-hour celebration of the excesses of the '90s--sex, drugs, and money rolls--ramped up to 11 by the addictive camera and editing style, the film (thanks to the director's unrelenting need to resist doing the predictable or even acceptable thing) makes its slow dive into perdition and ruin so gradually you're almost convinced the slide began at the very start, when he was a dewy newbie in Wall Street, and that it was in Jordan Belfort's very nature that he rise high and then lose it all (or lose as much as a formerly all-powerful white male in America can possibly lose and still clinch a book deal and movie of his life's story). All of Scorsese's films are acts of penance in their way (for him or his surrogate protagonists), and this one is no different: go, sin no more.

3. The Grandmaster, Wong Kar Wai

Call Wong's latest a corrective to Ashes of Time: the fight sequences here are gorgeously shot and edited and coherent, where the fight sequences in the previous work are sheer confusion. Sadly, many of the filmmaker's devotees have deserted him for selling out and delivering a halfway conventional biopic, of legendary martial arts master (and trainer of Bruce Lee) Yip Kai-man (also known as Ip Man). I see it differently, as Wong's most radical film yet: a monstrous chimera of a creature that starts out as straightforward biopic, then evolves into something more wayward, more volatile, more inimitably Wong--in effect, a film to confound both ordinary viewers and Wong's own fans.

2. Philomena, Stephen Frears

It's an odd-couple comedy: retired nurse Philomena Lee teams up with journalist/author/disgraced civil service officer Martin Sixsmith in a quixotic search for her son, which she was coerced by nuns to give up for adoption years ago (it's also yet another true story, making this a year stuffed with based-on-real-life adaptations). Judi Dench and Steve Coogan score points off of Philomena's relative guilelessness and Sixsmith's grating snobbishness, and otherwise put up an entertaining enough comic act to let us relax our guard--and then dive in for the dramatic kill. There is some question as to the ethics of resurrecting one nun to be the target of the film's very clear scorn (though the accusations leveled at her and her fellow sisters are, according to Sixsmith, true), but the real question in my mind is: will the Church allow this to be screened in Manila? Because Philomena's faith is real, and the way she struggles to maintain that faith in the face of her Church's abuses is to my mind an issue we all should face, and struggle with as well. Far and away the best thing Frears has ever done. 

1. Norte, the End of History, Lav Diaz

Some might consider Lav Diaz's latest at four hours a compromised condensation (his usual films run from six to eight hours, and are based on his own scripts--this is his first attempt at translating someone else's writing to the big screen); instead it's his most visually gorgeous work--incidentally his first in color since, oh I don't know when--and his most overtly Dostoevskian, a transposition of Crime and Punishment to Filipino society. It's also the most richly humane, most rounded film I've seen in 2013, an unflinching view of both existential evil and uncomplaining good, though Diaz's attitude to either quality is actually more complexly ambivalent than I've suggested. In terms of ambition and uncompromising art, the film of the year.

Postscript:

Didn't do a 'Best of 2012;' frankly speaking, after the loss of various major film artists of Philippine cinema that year, I couldn't muster the enthusiasm to celebrate anything, much less draw up a list. 

This represents what I believe to be the best of what I've managed to see in 2013, whether released in Manila or elsewhere; if they haven't reached local theaters they will soon, or will be released in DVD or online, in which case I hope this can serve as a guide to what might be worth watching in the coming months. Sadly, my year-long fast meant I failed to write about or note what I considered the finest film of the past few years, and Lav Diaz's strongest work to date: Florentina Hubaldo, CTE, about a young woman suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (the answer as to why she should suffer from what is basically an aging boxer's disease is the source of much of the film's unsettling power). Against that massive tragedy, all else--Hollywood or otherwise--seemed puny in comparison.

First published in Businessworld, 1.9.14

American Hustle; The Wolf of Wall Street; Frozen (Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee); The Time of the Doctor (Jamie Payne; Dr. Who Christmas Special)

(Warning: plot twists of the various titles mentioned are discussed in close and explicit detail)

Do the hustle

Call it the Year of True-Life Movies:  American Hustle is David O. Russell's take on the Abscam scandals, some of which, he cagily admits in an opening title, "actually happened." The succeeding events at most provide a rough outline on which Russell hangs a series of sexy, funny, occasionally poignant encounters between memorably sleazy characters, played by some very smart (and smart-looking) actors, filmed in the director's distinct adrenaline-rush style (frenetic cutting and handheld camerawork that somehow retains visual coherence), perhaps channeling filmmaker Martin Scorsese more than usual what with the outrageous '70s outfits and tremendous '70s hair. Bradley Cooper's Jheri Curls, Christian Bale's swollen belly, and Jennifer Lawrence's blonde fizziness got the most favorable notices from critics, but it's Amy Adam's faux English mistress--juggling her attraction to both Bale's swindler and Cooper's FBI agent and countering the threat of Lawrence's housewife--that feels more and more like the film's true heart: her and her comic struggle to remain true to a tangle of loyalties.

Some of Russell and co-writer Eric Singer's story choices are puzzling--I can see the need to depict mistrust of government, but is the Mafia that much more trustworthy, or effective? Is Russell saying you can cut a straight deal with gangsters sooner than with government, or that gangsters are so lethally effective it's better to screw the government? And granted the real-life equivalent of Bale's swindler really liked the real-life equivalent of Jeremy Renner's Camden mayor, did they really have to gloss over the fact that the latter was not as innocent as depicted onscreen?

Not perhaps as drenched in gritty pathos as Russell's The Fighter, or as stubbornly, imaginatively idiosyncratic as his I Heart Huckabees (in my book his masterpiece), but still a fine entertainment, and any excuse to watch Russell flex his considerable filmmaking muscles is in my book a perfectly valid excuse. Good hustle, sir.

The lower depths

There's Russell's vivid approximation of a Martin Scorsese film, and then there's the original. The Wolf of Wall Street is everything American Hustle is--sexy, funny, fluid, profane--and more: disgusting, despairing, demented, in both a good and bad way. 

Why watch a hundred and sixty plus minutes of Leonardo DiCaprio sniffing and screwing and screaming when Ray Liotta had done all that back in '90 and Robert De Niro had done it best (in my book, anyway) in '95? Because, well, no one does it quite the way Scorsese does, and I suppose if anyone has to repeat himself--switching the milieu from '70s Brooklyn to '70s Vegas to '90s Wall Street--Scorsese's earned the privilege, charting the grotesque rise (through violence, through business, through deceit) and ignominious fall (through violence, through hubris, through sheer accident) of a white male in American society yet again. It's a story so vast and broad (if not exactly profound) it could stand being repeated twice, the volume cranked up louder with each retelling--or at least that was what Scorsese must have thought when he did this film.

Christina McDowell makes a compelling case that the story shouldn't be told at all; that if anything Scorsese has done us a disservice telling Belfort's story with such cinematic brio. It's a heartfelt, harrowing letter, and should give the viewer pause; Scorsese does much in the picture but one thing he doesn't do is tell the victim's side of the story.

Hard to see Scorsese doing that, though. He rarely editorializes--simply tells the tale, whether it's Jordan Belfort's or Henry Hill's or Jake LaMotta's; shows us the glamor and dirt, then shows us the fall. The most he'll give us by way of message is that the man--any man--gets his, eventually. Scorsese practically insists on this point--even Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ is punished for wanting an ordinary life. We see Belfort snort up mountains of coke; we also see him struggle to his Ferrari, barely able to crawl because he's overdosed on 'luudes. We see him fucking everything in sight; we also see him atop his wife in one particularly excruciating scene, where she clearly doesn't want him there (I personally don't think Margot Robbie got near enough the credit she deserved).

And is all that high life--the booze, drugs, naked girls--necessary? Scorsese doesn't quite sell the decadence: you see what's happening, you get loud rock on the soundtrack, but he doesn't linger; the excess comes at you in a rush much the way you imagine it came at Belfort, or at least the way Scorsese imagines it must have come at Belfort. Scorsese's acting as anthropologist here, a cool observer with maybe a bit of inside information on the effects of being high (and other less pretty symptoms). He shows us the arc of Belfort's addiction (not to drugs--when he's compelled to quit he does so without much struggle--but to money and the power that money brings) in a way that's fascinating, almost addictive. We crave the high of Scorsese's style, the way Belfort--and Hill, and Rothstein, and LaMotta--crave the high of their respective vices. 

If Scorsese is guilty of excusing or prettifying any of the facts, it's in suggesting that Belfort victimized mostly the rich (a lot of small business entrepreneurs got hurt); Belfort himself claims to have turned a new leaf (debatable) and has announced plans to hand over the profits from book and film to victims.*

*Possibly a moot point, as the film is doing disappointing business. Which leads one to ask: the film is encouraging what? Glorifying what? Seems to me the general audience understood well enough what critics didn't: that Scorsese's picture is less an entertainment than an ordeal, one we don't sit through so much as suffer, the way Catholics suffer through Lent.

Will Belfort's proposed generosity become reality? Frankly I think Belfort hasn't stopped hustling. But the biggest disservice Scorsese may have done is to call attention to flashier predators, instead of the real criminals living quieter, more respectable lives. 

But a film that probes into big-time financial corruption probably needs a different director with a different (more sober?) approach; even then you wonder if he (the theoretical filmmaker and his proposed work) could attract enough financing--or audience--to make a difference. 

Meanwhile we've got this, Scorsese's latest, and what he does manage to do--while hardly his best work--is pretty damned good, I'd say.
 

Brain freeze

Give the filmmakers of Frozen (Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee) some credit: they take the standard-issue Disney princess and tinker with her a bit, make her more kickbutt, more assertive, less dependent on her Prince Charming (in this case a Danish lunkhead named Kristoff). In place of insensitive parents (they're killed off early) a troubled sister; in place of sneering villain, a smooth charmer. 

There's effort made in the digital animation department too, and when not being sandbagged by the inane songs one can marvel at the way the digital snow clumps and falls, or the way the digital ice gleams in the chill air (filled with digital flakes that seem suspended in silence, a nice little digital effect). 

But alas, movie, thy studio is Disney, and before long stupidity takes over. Enter an annoyingly cheerful snowman sidekick; notice the inordinate amount of time spent on extreme snow sports (sledding, tobogganing, ice sliding, etc.); marvel at the standard-issue happy ending, complete with lunkhead by the heroine's side (couldn't she opt to be single with her sister, or--better yet--shack up with a Danish hottie named Kristine instead?). 

After The Wolf of Wall Street I thought I knew something about disgust, and revulsion, and overwhelming nausea. Pfui--just had to sit through this and found myself wanting to see the Scorsese again, to wash away the thick taste of treacle coating my tongue.

Worse of all is the end credits, which reveal that the story was based on one of Hans Christian Andersen's greatest stories, The Snow Queen: about a brother, subverted into evil by a shard of glass in the heart, who runs away from home, and the loving sister who sets out to bring him back. It's a tale full of subtle psychological subtext (the brother might be undergoing the painful transitions and traumas of adolescence) and harrowing drama (the sister moves heaven and hell to find him), and really deserves a proper adaptation--by Studio Ghibli, perhaps? Certainly something far better than this mouse dropping of a movie.

Time to die

Not much I can say about director Jamie Payne and writer Steven Moffat's The Time of the Doctor except that Moffat tries to cram too much material into the hour and fifteen minutes allotted to him--though to be fair I'd say this is a far better problem to have than too little spread out over the same period of time. 

Oh, and while Moffat seems to have tied all loose ends into a more or less tight knot, the accomplishment hardly seems as significant as the special's real achievement: celebrating Matt Smith's tenure as The Eleventh Doctor before he hands the reins over to the upcoming Thirteenth, played by Peter Capaldi. 

Why, after ranging all of time and space, should Eleven waste the rest of his natural lifespan defending a piddling little town (named Christmas, of all things!) occupied by a mere few hundred lifeforms? More to the point, why waste so much of the episode's precious running time delineating Eleven's growing bond with the townsfolk, when we could instead watch the growing antagonism between Eleven and his countless foes?  

Because Eleven as Matt Smith has played and developed him through the years isn't really about foes, or fighting (or the First Question, or The Silence, or Gallifrey, or all the other piddling little subplots smaller minds have worried about all this time); Eleven as Matt Smith has played him is about the people--kids in particular--he's come to know, and who have come to know him. Smith loves the fans--the Whovians--and is loved in return, and that's what the episode's really all about.

So the premise is a bit silly--a town called Christmas, to be defended against the rising hordes--so what? It's a charming little town locked in an endless White Christmas, with a brief sunrise and sunset for variety; not a grand setting or even a logical setting for Eleven's final days, but a poetic one, a--yes--living Hallmark Holiday Card, with Daleks and The Silence and the odd wooden Cyberman hovering about the margins to add a bit of tension, a bit of cool.

And against this background Smith rallies the people; takes a moment to speak to young Barnable (Jack Hollington)--from his very first episode he's always had good rapport with children--and yes, dons rubbery age makeup that fools no one, only there's something comfortingly paternal about Smith despite his age (he's the youngest actor to ever play the Doctor), and the makeup brings this out. Do the scenes of Smith as an old man crimp his manic energy? Perhaps, but they complete him, or our image of him, filling out the portrait in our heads of his entire unnaturally long life, from moment of arrival to moment of departure (added bonus that when he's re-energized--wrinkled and feeble and bowed, suddenly bellowing at the top of his voice--it's a mighty moment). 

Eleven's final scenes are blessedly brief--no extended bathos a la Russell T. Davis' sendoff of David Tennant--but no less finely written. Actually Moffat's suffered a lot of (to my mind undeserved) grief over his plotting (complex, to put it kindly) and characterization (eccentric, says fans; shallow and annoyingly cute, says non-fans), but I say he's at least master of the brief vignette that drives a barbed hook to the heart, and here manages two such scenes: Clara's grandmother's anecdote ("I wanted everything to stop.") and Handle's passing (which channels both Castaway and, weirdly, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia). 

"I will not forget one line of this; not one day," Smith promises, and we believe him--at that moment man and character seems to have perfectly fused, in intent, in feeling, in our feelings for him. Moffat allows Eleven a glimpse of "the first face this face saw," a kind of circling back or return, not to mention discarding (the bow tie falling to the floor), and then--zap. New face, moved on. We're caught off-guard but that's Moffat for you: never quite doing the expected thing. Farewell, Mr. Smith; we will miss you.

1.2.14

Bullet to the Head, Silver Linings Playbook, Secret Sunshine, Journey to Italy

Last Action Hero

Bullet to the Head is easily the best recent American action flick around, and Walter Hill can teach both Tarantino and Nolan a thing or two about action filmmaking.

You heard me. 

"But what about the script, a standard-issue buddy pic filled with standard-issue dialogue? What about Stallone, who hasn't given a good performance in years?" Actually the script is 1) a decent workhorse plot with a handful of fairly clever twists, the dialogue a touch more amusing than it has any right to be ("Bang. Down. Owned." "You had me at 'fuck you!'") because Stallone and co-star Sung Kang have good chemistry; and 2) if you want good dialogue and acting, go watch a stage play; the real reason to watch this is to welcome the return to the big screen of one Walter Hill, filmmaker--last reported retired, apparently not quite.

Hill speaks today's action filmmaking language--handheld footage, ADHD editing--with admirable fluency (he was after all doing hardcore action back when some of these directors were still in grade school). He knows how to shake 'em and cut 'em, only unlike some of the relatively younger turks (I'm looking at you, Nolan) he only flirts with incoherence, mixing up the footage with more stable shots that anchor the action to their confined urban spaces.

And it isn't as if he were repeating himself; the Hill that did The Long Riders or Southern Comfort or The Warriors used slow motion; Bullet does not, and you can almost hear Hill saying "That slow-mo stuff is for kids;  real men do it in real time." There's a showdown involving fireaxes that I thought was within shouting distance of Toshiro Mifune's spear duel in The Hidden Fortress--high praise, I know, but I think the choreography, camerawork and editing deserves it. A New Orleans critic called the confrontation "a choppy series of frustratingly quick cuts that end up turning the whole sequence into a generic blur of clanks and blood spatters." I say the man needs to see more Bob Fosse; Hill has the confidence to zoom in close, shake things up a bit, even accelerate the cutting rate to the point of confusion and at the right moment pull back and allow the whole thing to come together inside your head.

And Hill unlike some filmmakers (I'm looking at you, Tarantino) knows how to evoke setting; knows how to evoke atmosphere;  knows that the throwaway shots that fill the dead space between action setpieces are what help distinguish a coked-up hack from a real filmmaker. New Orleans here may be an urban fantasy every bit as unreal as New York City in The Warriors, but it's a memorably stylized fantasy--Stallone drives past an abandoned factory and it sits in the bright Louisiana sunshine like a disintegrating Czarist palace; old industrial spaces gleam with rust and dripping water, as if dipped in oil; Bobo's shack squats over the gleaming bayou like an oversized poison toad. When a car explodes and flips (we're told that Stallone's character was trained in demolitions, helping explain--barely--all the gratuitous detonations) the flame and smoke rise pyramidlike from one corner of the screen, and your spine can't help but tingle at this bit of gorgeously served mis-en-scene.  

Are the boys back in town? Not really--the film has earned the smallest amount of boxoffice of any in Stallone's career, and barely registered in the local multiplexes before being pulled out, presumably due to poor ticket sales. But from the evidence onscreen Hill is back, and he's back with a vengeance.

Lovers on Lithium

David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook shows how a pair of lovers meet and struggle with each other, the catch being both suffer from a mental condition. It's a romantic comedy, of course.

That takes more and less courage than one might think. No, Russell doesn't depict the extremes of the condition: Bradley Cooper's Pat is bipolar but not cripplingly so, at least while he takes his meds; Jennifer Lawrence's Tiffany has something unspecified which probably involves depression (she mentions taking Effexor) and she does just fine, more or less; Pat Sr. has an obsessive-compulsive disorder that he manages to keep undiagnosed, though after five minutes of watching him (the relentless viewing of every Eagles game; the even more relentless observance of football superstitions) anyone would come to the same conclusion. 

They're not that bad off; if they were, this would probably be a different movie, and probably not a comedy. That said, it's amazing the things they do get right--I love the scene where Pat and Tiffany start talking about their meds, throwing names like Seroquel and Klonopin and Trazadone around like so many types of Hershey's Chocolates. It's a funny way to connect that feels perfectly true, with everyone around wondering at the foreign language they're suddenly spouting. I love how Pat seems to focus on a specific topic, then suddenly swerves ninety degrees in a different direction: "I don't have an iPod. I don't have a phone. They don't let me make calls. I'm going to call Nikki." Some of the dialogue sound as if recorded or scribbled down from inmates from real institutions, then handed over for the actors to use.

I love it that the finale--a dance contest where Pat and Tiffany don't mean to win, just earn enough points for a parleyed bet--doesn't show a pair of lovers giving a great dance number, just two reasonably limber actors pouring their hearts out clumsily and heedlessly on the dance floor, letting their chemistry instead of their meager dance skills speak for them. Russell's signature brand of nervy cutting and over-the-shoulder handheld footage makes for a good fit--the style suggests Pat's precariously high-tension worldview nicely. His camera rushes the lovers like a fan shrieking for an autograph, giving them the unadulterated star treatment (he's more respectful of the veteran dancers, keeping the camera relatively still to better capture their choreography). 

This is easily one of the best romantic comedies I've seen recently--is probably the only romantic comedy I've liked recently, which is a whole miracle right then and there.

Massive trauma

Lee Chang Dong's Secret Sunshine is easily the most harrowing film of recent years; with its deceptively bright and artless cinematography (by Cho Yong-kyou, who also did Timeless, Bottomless Bad Movie and Barking Dogs Never Bite) it conceals the machinations of a vast uncaring world ready to pull the unsuspecting in, chew them up in horrific ways, spit 'em out like gristle. 

Like Ozu or Naruse it seems Lee is able to sketch with elegant strokes the complicated life of a young woman named Shin-ae (Jeon Do-yeon in a tremendous performance) who has already suffered a tragedy; with son in tow she wants to replant roots in her dead husband's hometown of Milyang, which in Chinese apparently translates to 'Secret Sunshine.' Lee is a modern master at the art of understatement, unreeling with relentless deliberation a story of suffering, anger and loss--leavened with not a bit of satire and observational, sometimes perverse, humor.

It's perhaps useless to compare Lee to a seasoned sadist like Lars Von Trier; personally I find the contrast instructive. Lee's heroines are generally less passive, more likely to possess a sense of wit or imagination (I just have to think of Emily Watson's Bess or Bjork's Selma to shudder at the sheer sense of victimization involved). Von Trier has often said he suffered from depression; watching his films I often feel he wants to dump his depression on us, bringing along all the advantages of personal involvement (strong motivation, extensive experience) as well as disadvantages (a lack of perspective). Lee from the evidence of his films doesn't seem as emotionally entangled, bringing to the table his advantages: the patience to refrain from pushing till the victim (sorry--viewer) is numbed past the point of belief or suffering (at a certain point you stop weeping and start giggling); the judgment necessary to inflict only as much pain as necessary to prove the film's thesis, not as much pain as will satisfy the filmmaker's bloodlust.

Arguably the single most painful moment in the film (skip the rest of this paragraph if you plan to see the picture) is the conclusion: as Shin-ae grasps desperately at one thing or another (church, sex, suicide) to steady herself, she finally and unexpectedly finds peace...and hence the cruelty. Some kind of resolution, even one involving death, even one involving her death, could have provided closure; instead she's granted breathing space, a moment of grace that enables her to move on, accept whatever else life has in store for her. She's ready for more punishment in short, and you feel that Lee has a varied and limitless inventory set aside waiting for her. That's the frame of mind you're in, after watching this film.

Cinema is dead

Simplest description of Roberto Rossellini's Journey to Italy: two Northern Europeans' odyssey through the mind and sensibility of a Southern European filmmaker. Second simplest description: the fracture and eventual disintegration of a middle-class marriage.

For the rest of the post (it got too big!) please go here.

2.22.13 

Black Swan, The Fighter, The Tourist, Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Natalie Portman, basically trying to do to herself what Aronofsky was doing with this movie

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Michael Apted's adaptation of the latest Narnia movies has plenty the matter with it, of course, and it all starts from how the whole series was conceived and designed--a bit of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings (the sweeping, digitally constructed  battle sequences, the rousing martial music, the odd sea serpent or dragon), a bit of Harry Potter (the magic flashes out from hands and objects like so many digitally added laser beams). Whoever the production designer and special effects supervisor were--either Apted signed on without insisting on approving the design or effects beforehand or he's never been one to obsess over a film's overall look or this may not have been a personally significant project for him--they prioritized boxoffice appeal over putting out a distinct product. Ironically, boxoffice receipts in America look to suffer--the first weekend is weak, and only gotten weaker--though the picture is doing better in markets outside the United States (I'm generalizing here, but the picture seems to do better in countries that accept or practice strong Christian tradition).

But that's the boxoffice; how's the film itself? Despite the weaknesses (the effects, the design, the timid air of being a feeble Lord of the Rings knockoff), I do like the film. It may not be a true Narnian film, but it's Narnian enough that you get some of the flavors of C.S. Lewis' classic. 

And Lewis' fantasy series is a classic, I say. Lewis may not be the flavor of the moment the way Tolkien is, and I know the strong Christian subtext puts many readers off, but I prefer his books over Tolkien's for a number of reasons: 

1) He's well-versed in science fiction (he knows enough, say, of Olaf Stapledon to be able to criticize him), and he uses a few of the genre's concepts (the idea, for example, of relative time (Narnia's time flows faster than our world's), of doors that open to other dimensions (see The Magician's Nephew, and The Last Battle), and of Very Large Objects, complete environments within complete environments (some suggestion of this, plus sophisticated examples of dimension-twisting in The Last Battle)). 

2) He ranges freely over his world, from its very beginning (The Magician's Nephew) to its furthermost reaches (Voyage of the Dawn Treader) to its subterranean habitats (The Silver Chair) to its final destiny (The Last Battle) the way Tolkien never does with his Middle Earth (there is The Silmarrillion--but how many outside of Tolkien completists read that dull tome?). 

3) He is not above adding the inventively imagined creature or situation, or even resorting to the occasionally surreal. Lewis' Narnia has its share of elves, dwarves and dragons, but--a faun with an umbrella, walking past a lamppost in the middle of a woods? A race of invisible creatures (who look even stranger when made visible?)? A sea of lilies, beyond which stands a permanently roaring wave of water marking  the end of the world--which happens to be flat? 

Tolkien has mastered the galumphing blood-and-thunder, sword-and-sorcery style of storytelling, but after reading the whole series through more than once, I've finally found the Ring books endlessly tiresome, endlessly conventional...whereas, I suspect, we've barely scratched the surface of Lewis' Narnia.

Lewis' series is more than just adventure and magic and Christian symbolism, though. At the end of the day it's really all about the Pevensies and their longing for Narnia and Aslan--arguably the greatest imaginary playmate ever created. About Prince Caspian (now king) who has grown older, sadder, hopefully wiser since taking charge of Narnia; about the splendid Ripicheep, possibly the most gallant and great-hearted mouse in all of creation (and I include that insufferably wholesome rat what rules an allegedly magic kingdom down in Florida); and about Eustace Scrubb, an odious little boy who, thanks to the influence of Narnia, becomes considerably less odious.

Apted, who in films like The Coal Miner's Daughter and even Gorillas in the Mist has proven to be skillful (to say the list) in depicting onscreen relationships, does a fine job here; his Ripicheep (voiced by Simon Pegg) is small only in stature while his Eustace Scrubb (Will Poulter, brilliant) is hilariously self-involved; they meet onscreen like flame and gunpowder, and you enjoy the resulting sparks. The ending, where the Dawn Treader reaches the End of the World and lives are irrevocably changed, is a fine mix of muted tragedy and bittersweet triumph, a fitting capstone to this latest (and, judging from the money that isn't coming in, possibly last) installment. 

The Tourist

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's latest is another one I feel I've got to speak up for, which is a bit of a surprise--I'd seen von Donnersmarck's far better received The Lives of Others and wasn't all that impressed; thought the protagonist in that picture made a few dumb moves, though the film as a whole captures the era's feeling of exhausted despair. 

Critics have called The Tourist "slow" and "muddled," the two leads "lacking chemistry." What I found was an old-fashioned caper film, elegantly paced, with stunts that look realistic enough to be actually dangerous (the rooftop sequence reminds me of Roman Polanski, a master at depicting hazardous heights, though von Donnersmarck makes an honorable enough attempt) and a cleverly structured plot--refreshing change from all the hysterical, frenetically paced thrillers released recently, all noise and heavy artillery and very little style. 

I find that the two stars are totally at ease with each other, are not afraid to play their parts--Johnny Depp here is not Johnny Depp the international star, but a nebbish on the run (he's always been fond of losing himself in his roles). Jolie plays Jolie; that's what the script calls for, that's what she plays. 

The movie is not North by Northwest (to which it owes a huge debt); but then, few movies are.

Black Swan

Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan is, to put it mildly, a hoot and a half. A rising young ballerina feels insecure about her role as lead dancer in a prestigious ballet company's production of Swan Lake (she herself had inherited the position from the company's former lead dancer, who has since gone nuts). Throw in a Mephistophelean ballet director (Victor Cassell), a Stage Mother From Hell (Barbara Hershey), a duplicitous slut of a dance colleague (Mila Kunis), and you realize--with the camp rising in your gorge--that what you're watching is a demented showbiz melodrama on speed: Showgirls in tutu.

But no, Aronofsky isn't satisfied with this. He has to throw in actualized psychodrama--bones cracking, skin transforming, feathers sprouting in the oddest places. Admirers call it a confluence of David Cronenberg with Michael Powell and Brian De Plama; I say Aronofsky is trying to ape the named filmmakers, only he doesn't have Cronenberg's seductive pacing, or Powell's unassuming craftsmanship, or De Palma's comic sense of cruelty.

Winona Ryder goes all Sissy Spacek on us while Natalie Portman looks desperately thin; about a quarter of the movie is Aronofsky zooming into gigantic closeups of Portman's pinched face, revealing half a pound of makeup on her wasted cheeks. Vincent Cassell spends his screen time pounding Mila Kunis, kneading Portman's steamed pork buns, or walking away with the picture tucked firmly in his pocket.

Scariest moment is Barbara Hershey as the Stage Mother from Hell, clipping Portman's fingernails almost to the bone (Hell Hath No Fury like a pissed-off mother wielding a pair of nail scissors). Only time I cringed.

The Fighter

Word is that Aronofsky was supposed to do The Fighter; thank heavens it was given to David Russell instead. Where Aronofsky is all over the place with his Monster Goose psychodrama, Russell tells his story simply, quietly, with as much honesty as he can (he does more with plain sunlight than Aronofsky does with spotlights, shadows, and splashy CGI effects). Bale is fantastic as Dicky, Whalberg quietly effective as Mickey, and Melissa Leo amazing as their hard driving mother (like Hershey she's a Stage Mother From Hell too, only you spend as much time feeling for her as you do laughing at her). 

The performances are all terrific, but it's Russell who does the star turn. His editing rhythms are eccentric, restless; he likes to show, say, a man getting out of a car, then either cutting out a shot of the man crossing the street, or cutting out a shot of the man knocking and entering, or cutting out the shot of the man getting out of the car--depends on how he feels at the moment, and how he wants you to feel. Unlike Aronofsky--who is all huge closeups revealing the human visage as a cratered, mountain-ringed horror--Russell likes to shoot at medium to long shot, basically keeping the drama at arm's length, keeping you conscious and alert of the material at hand.

Only with the fight sequences does he close in, but here he deploys the video cameras used in so many HBO boxing matches, deploys the actual music you would hear from such matches (not for him the Bill Conti symphonic uplift used like a ten-ton truck in the Rocky movies). There's a cheesiness to the music, and the film in general, but it's a self-conscious cheesiness, wielded with a knowing wink.

Like Aronofsky's picture, this is a hoary old storyline, a combination of Former Fighter Finds Redemption and Two Brothers with Differing Destinies; unlike Aronofsky, this is done with an acute, intelligent eye, and great sensitivity. One of the best of the year.