Ran (Akira Kurosawa, 1985)

Burning down the house

Been years since I saw Akira Kurosawa's Ran (1985) and decades since I saw it projected (an unimpressive 16 mm print in an improvised theater). Watching the 2016 4K UHD restoration on the big screen forty years after its premiere is like watching a storm surge approach shore: you're confronted with an unstoppable wall stretching from end to end, and you're not sure whether to run (where to?) or fall on your knees in worship. 

And then you realize, after so many viewings, like a shock of saltwater to the face: damn, but this film is funny.

The Tragedy of Macbeth (Joel Coen, 2021)

Sound and fury

Joel Coen's latest is fascinating for what it's not--it's not a collaboration with his brother Ethan, not an original script or remake (or riff off a Greek classic a la O Brother Where Art Thou?), not in color but the rare straight adaptation, in stark black-and-white.

West Side Story (Steven Spielberg, 2021)

Batang West Side

Not sure why people are surprised Spielberg has done a dance musical--arguably he's been making them throughout his career, from the deadly pas de deux between the colossal Peterbilt and little red Valiant in Duel to the lines of police cars snaking behind Goldie Hawn in The Sugarland Express to the Ferris Wheel strolling down a seaside dock in 1941 to the alien ships playing tag across the clear Wyoming skies in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Spielberg isn't just a master at shooting people dancing (see the USO dance hall sequence in 1941), he's a master at shooting anything dancing, from cars to saucers to Ferris wheels; the first time we manage to view the entire Great White in Jaws (after teasing us for about an hour) Spielberg cuts to a high overhead shot of the creature gliding smoothly past the fishing vessel (accompanied by John Williams' eerie harpstrings) and we see with an electric tingle shooting up our spine that it's about the size of the vessel. That's why the quip "You're gonna need a bigger boat" lingers so in memory--turns out Police Chief Brody was right. 

Coriolanus (Ralph Fiennes, 2011)

Belatedly for Shakespeare's death day, an old post

Inflexible Man

Ralph Fiennes' Coriolanus is a lively and intense adaptation of an obscure Shakespeare play--especially obscure, considering this is the first-ever attempt to deliver it to the big screen.

There's probably a reason for the neglect--Caius Martius (dubbed 'Coriolanus' after his conquest of the Volscian city of Corioles)--is an unregenerate bastard, a highborn military career officer seeking election to high office who looks down upon ordinary men, claiming their breaths “reek o'th'rotten fens, whose loves I prize / As the dead carcasses of unburied men / That do corrupt my air.” Asked to display his battle scars to the public--a Roman tradition when campaigning--he puts down the wounds as mere “Scratches with briers / Scars to move laughter only,” and declares “I would not buy / Their mercy at the price of one fair word.”

Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015) and the arguably greatest film ever made

Hell hath no Furi
 
In the beginning was the word.

And the word was Max. 

And Max's creator--George Miller, MD--cut his first feature film on a kitchen table. 

And the film was a hit, all frantic action and blaring trumpets and bug-eyed skulls hurtling at the big screen.

A bigger-budgeted sequel was done, with postapocalyptic dune buggies chasing a spike-crowned Mack truck, to the strains of Brian May's mythmaking music.

And Miller saw that it was good--maybe great. Definitely better than anything infidel Steven Spielberg has made, is making, will ever make.

Chimes at Midnight (Campanadas a medianoche, Orson Welles, 1965)

Now in Criterion Blu-ray 

Part of the Shakespeare blogathon

(Note: plot discussed in close detail--but at 450 years old and counting, is anyone still unfamiliar with the story?)

Bigger than life

What to say about this film? I first saw it on a pirated VHS tape I'd rented in New York back in 1991 (the tape startled me; I had no idea pirated tapes still existed in the USA), and despite the video snow, unstable vertical, wretched sound (not that the actual soundtrack was a model of clarity), thought it the most amazing thing I'd ever seen. Haunted Theater 80 at St. Marks for the longest time, because I'd been told they screened it before and might again, but it never showed up. Finally had a chance in Detroit of all places, an arthouse theater which served coffee and sandwiches while you watched. There were two screenings, and I went to both; had no reason to change my opinion.

The Butler (Lee Daniels); Fruitvale Station (Ryan Coogler); Much Ado About Nothing (Joss Whedon)

The butler didn't do it

Lee Daniel's The Butler (director's name included reportedly for copyright reasons) really should read: Lee Daniel's Forrest Gump. We get a similarly hapless, helpless hero bouncing his passive way through recent American history, though Daniels does refrain from digitally inserting his protagonist in every famous archival footage in recent memory--at least we're spared that travesty. 

I'm guessing though what Daniel's really striving for with this story of Cecil Gaines (Forrest Whitaker), the White House butler who served seven presidents (based loosely--very loosely--on the story of Eugene Allen), would be popular audience response to Gump's feel-good version of history (we experience in swift succeeding order institutional oppression; physical, mental suffering; decades of bad prosthetic age makeup; and ultimately and eventually vindication, triumph) combined with the kind of respectful accolade granted to filmmaker James Ivory and novelist Kazuo Ishiguro for their film Remains of the Day, about yet another butler (Anthony Hopkins) serving in the cusp of history. Not an easy task, though--Ivory directs with an aesthetic severity that sucks all the pathos out of the material; you actually find yourself gasping for air in the film's hermetically sealed screen space (my favorite of Ivory's works, possibly) while Hopkin's unceasingly smiling butler stand invisible and invincible in one corner. 

Daniels doesn't suffer any severity, except perhaps the ADHD kind: his movie makes Robert Zemeckis' picaresque romp through the decades look positively Japanese with subtlety and restraint. There isn't a dramatic confrontation or emotional breakdown or historic occasion he can't shove in your face and up your nose with his ten-ton touch; this is coercive emotional porn of the worst sort, shameless propaganda shrieked out from the rooftops on the remote chance that perhaps you didn't get the message. I found myself hiding behind the seat before me, trying to avoid the sheer obviousness of it all (case in point: the picture's final death is telegraphed at least minutes before it actually occurs, causing me to exclaim: "Can't believe he's going to do it--oh, he did it!").

A shame, because there are some honestly powerful moments to be found here. Daniels builds some surprisingly potent comic-horrific contrapuntal rhythms from the sequence where Gaines' rebellious son (David Oyelowo) insists on keeping his chair at a whites-only lunch counter while Gaines seats honored guests at the White House dining room; later Daniels intercuts between Gaines listening to Nixon talking about undermining the Black Panthers and Gaines' son listening to the Panthers speak similarly brutal language. In moments like these Daniels makes a cogent point: that estranged father and son aren't so far apart in their struggles and aspirations as they would like to think they are.

Whitaker does plenty with an indrawn breath or a slightly lifted brow--but he isn't working with a screenplay from an Ishiguro novel, nor does he enjoy the deft guidance of a James Ivory (at one point Gaines actually quotes a line, not from the Ivory film but from an interview about the film, where Hopkins summarized his character with the observation that ideally a room should feel emptier when the butler is present; Hopkins actually makes you feel that vacuum while Whitaker with no small help from Daniels fails--possible because the feat requires subtlety). Whitaker's role (heroic restraint in the face of dramatic circumstances) also bears striking resemblance to Cherry Pie Picache's emotionally wounded-up surrogate mother in Brillante Mendoza's Foster Child--only Mendoza doesn't provide dramatic catharsis and spiritual uplift at the end of his film. 

What Daniels has done (or failed to do) can't help but make me better appreciate Eddie Romero's achievement in his Ganito Kami Noon, Paano Kayo Ngayon (The Way We Were Then, The Way We Are Now, 1976)--yet another hapless Gump figure traipsing his way through history, only with tongue pressed firmly in cheek. Comedy solves a lot of problems in historical chronicles--you are forgiven the unlikeliest coincidences, you're excused from maintaining a wearying fidelity to realism, the same time comedy is constantly analytical; it tends to take an issue apart and hold it up for close examination, and properly used it can still develop an emotional wallop. The Butler could have used a bit more analysis, a lot less  catharsis; at the very least Daniels could have used more comedy to cut through all the cheese he poured over his huge steaming pile of nachos. 

Coming home

The impact of Ryan Coogler's intensely felt Fruitvale Station is belied by the relative innocuousness of the title: unless you know about or heard of what happened you'd be thinking the film is some kind of documentary on San Francisco's mass transit system.

It's some kind of document all right: the final twenty-four hours of Oscar Grant III, a young black man arrested and shot to death (accidentally, not-so-accidentally) by transit police on New Years' Day, 2009.

I've no large issues with the film's ending--far as I can see it's a powerful piece of filmmaking, apparently well researched and for the most part accurate. I like it that the more overtly brutish and possibly racist of the transit officers (Kevin Durand) isn't the one who fires the fatal shot; that it isn't quite made clear--or at least Coogler manages to recreate the confusion at the time--whether or not Grant's hands were handcuffed at the time, or if (as the officers claimed) he was really reaching for his waistband in an apparent attempt to draw a gun (he was unarmed). I think Coogler with the less-than-coherent imagery and editing is trying to make a larger, more powerful point: that a black man's existence is in such a state of ferment and turmoil his life can be cut short at any time, just like that.

Coogler makes a similar point earlier, in a subtler manner: Grant and his friends board the fateful train which pulls away; the camera stays put and as the train blurs into motion the passengers inside become shimmery and ghostlike, almost as if they threaten to flicker completely out of existence. Lovely, memorable effect.

More troubling I suppose is his recreation of the earlier part of Grant's day. Coogler doesn't hide the fact that Grant is a repeat criminal offender, that he has used drugs in the past and is still using, and that he's less than faithful to his girlfriend. On the other hand he plants little hints here and there that tend to mitigate these character flaws--to cite three: he loves dogs, he's seriously thinking of quitting drugs, and if he flirts with a pretty girl it's mainly to help her out at work.


The first hint is the most problematic; the entire incident did happen--but to Coogler's brother, not Grant; Coogler admits to trying to establish a metaphor, that Grant is like that pit bull, a basically goodhearted creature with an unhappy reputation. The second (giving up drugs) was apparently discussed by Grant with his mother and girlfriend--though no one actually saw him go so far as to throw away an expensive bag of grass.

Can't help but liking the third little detail--for a while there you're not sure if Grant is being helpful or trying to pick up the girl, and the actor Michael B. Jordan plays up this ambiguity beautifully; also, this is one of the few details that seems to have some basis in fact, as the grandmother did say he called her asking for her fish recipe.

Think Coogler weakens his film when he tries to mitigate his protagonist's many flaws, when he tries to both present the flaws and defend his protagonist however indirectly from the uglier implications of those flaws. Coogler misses the more difficult but possibly more rewarding argument: that no matter what faults Grant may have (and even if every accusation leveled at him were true he'd hardly be the worst person aboard that train) he didn't deserve to be shot in the back, lying on his belly on the floor of that station.

Still it's a harrowing experience, and call Coogler irresponsible for picking the aftermath of the Treyvon Martin case to release his picture, I'm willing to admit the film articulates something, a frustration we feel on the issue of race in America: we may have come a long way, but have an even longer way to go. 
 

Much to-do

Joss Whedon's adaptation of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing is pretty much what you'd expect--sexy fun--but I didn't expect it to be so much of a piece with the rest of Whedon's work. Smart and attractive people dealing out wit in intricately woven, kilometric lines? That's so--Buffy. Or Firefly.

Not saying Whedon's managed to pull Shakespeare down to the level of television (well-made television); time and time again he's borrowed characters, situations, ideas from The Bard--he's just taken a major source of inspiration and brought it to the big screen. Plus he goes on to demonstrate how unintimidating Shakespearean English can be, if you've got a cast of actors confident enough and deft enough to wrap their lips around all that archaic (yet still playable after all these centuries, still of-the-moment pertinent) dialogue such that the meaning is not only clear, but the actors clearly had fun speaking them.

Helps that much of the film is casually--even carelessly--shot and cut together, giving the very opposite impression of a formal Shakespeare drama; Whedon has things hopping and we're put on alert trying to keep up with his lively sense of pace. 

If Much Ado feels so Whedonesque, the grounds on which the play is performed--Whedon's own house--feel so, well, Italian, or at least Santa Monica California doing its level best to be Italian (the play is officially set in Messina, Sicily). This along with (as Whedon himself notes) the film's extensive use of window panes, glass, reflections, candlelight, sunlight and shadow play on classically Shakespearean themes like deception and truth, of something or someone or someplace pretending to be what she, he or it is not, from that pretense forging a new truth--or at least a more persuasive lie.

There's a bright side (Benedick (Alexis Denisof) and Beatrice's (Amy Akers) belligerence hiding a budding affection for each other) and dark side (Claudio's (Fran Kranz) festering distrust of Hero (Jillian Morgese, in her debut role), fanned by the machinations of Don John (Sean Maher)). Matters come out right in the end (this is a comedy after all), but Whedon doesn't stint on the more pessimistic implications of the play, as mistrust and misogyny wrap their tentacles around Hero's helpless form to the point that even her own father Leonato (Clark Gregg, in arguably the finest, most understated performance here) accepts the calumny directed against his daughter with heartchilling speed, and the only ally she can reach out to is her friend and confidante (and fellow woman) Beatrice. People in distress act instinctively, and Hero's instincts have her choose along gender lines--that's how it is, the play seems to say, though it also makes you wonder: why should this be so? Why do women more easily trust women, why do men put much more faith in men, and should Hero continue loving a man who has demonstrated so little of both?

Hero and Claudio's relationship produces much of the play's drama; Benedick and Beatrice's churns up much of the comedy--but also much of the warmth, as theirs is the older story with more than a bit of history, and not just in the play. Whedon fans recognize the actors playing Benedick and Beatrice as the famously star-crossed lovers in his series Angel and call it cheap fan service, but watching them consummate that tragically brief romance in this modestly scaled, sloppily shaped Shakespearean comedy is like having a little ribboned gift presented for our delight. Ackers and Denisof aren't just a pair of pretty faces: you can tell they're totally comfortable with each other, and the developing fondness on their faces isn't just skilled emoting, it's genuinely felt. Wonderful fun.

8.19.13

The Lion King (Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff, 1994)

 

Can you feel the love tonight?

“Disneyfication” is an ugly word. Mirriam-Webster defines it “the transformation of something into a safe and carefully controlled entertainment.” I think of it as Disney's penchant for taking a classic piece of literature and scraping away everything disturbing or complex about it--everything that made it a classic, in effect--leaving what is essentially tasteless pap, fit only for toothless babes, or parents who wish to keep their kids from growing a sensibility, much less intelligence.

I can think of a few heinous examples: Hans Christian Andersen's “The Little Mermaid,” a fable about a sea maiden who enters into a Faustian bargain--a pair of legs and the chance to win an immortal soul, in exchange for her tongue (Andersen's tales were not exactly kid friendly). Disney's 1989 adaptation (by Ron Clements and John Musker) stitched together broad comedy sketches (featuring cute crustacean sidekicks), a fistful of song-and-dance numbers (by Alan Menken and the late Howard Ashman--arguably the only decent elements in the picture), lopped off the heartbreaking finale, and pretty much transformed the tale into the story of yet another Disney brat who can't get understanding from her overbearing daddy.

More atrocities: Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise's Beauty and the Beast (1991) stole its best ideas from Jean Cocteau's haunting 1946 film (would have done better to steal Cocteau's gorgeously shadowed cinematography as well). Ron Clements and John Musker's Aladdin (1992) jettisoned fabulously sensuous details in  the Islamic literary classic in favor of a movie about a stand-up comedian genie, voiced by Robin Williams.

Trousdale and Wise's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) continued the process--the hunchback's hideousness smoothed over (he mostly looked puffy, as if in reaction to a bee sting), the tragic conclusion turned into standard-issue Happy Hour. But there was one number--“Hellfire,” where Archdeacon Frollo (Tony Jay) sings of his unholy obsession with the beautiful Esmeralda--that for sheer passion and sense of damnation approached, however distantly, what Victor Hugo had in mind. Too unsettling for the kiddies, Disney must have decided (though the movie overall was a hit); the studio never tried for that level of intensity ever again.

Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff's 1994 The Lion King was supposed to be different. Set in Africa and borrowing the plot structure of Hamlet (with bits of Prince Hal thrown in), the movie was to be Disney's prestige production, the one where risks were taken. Thomas Disch wrote a treatment called King of the Kalahari, and a script was drawn up where Simba would be corrupted by Scar and eventually deposed.

Too dark, the studio must have (again) decided; rewrites followed. The way I see it, they could have gone either the Hamlet route, portrayed Simba as a young lion tormented by anguish over his father's slaying and guilt over his own indecisiveness (the possibly richer, more difficult alternative), or they could have gone the Henry IV route and introduced a Falstaff figure, to struggle with Mufasa for control of Simba's soul. Instead they have Simba opting for exile; at worst his crimes consist of laziness and a lack of accountability (the darker implications of Hamlet's self-torment--not to mention his near-incestuous love-hate for his mother Gertrude--are firmly left out of the picture). He meets a pair of friends, Timon and Pumbaa (basically pint-sized, heavily sanitized versions of Falstaff) and hangs with them.

He (please skip this paragraph if you haven't seen the picture--though at this point it's difficult to think of a reason why) eventually confronts Scar and has his vengeance, though indirectly: the villain loses balance and falls to his death (Come to think of it, nearly every Disney villain accidentally falls to their deaths. The lack of firm footwork among their ranks is alarming).

The animation is smooth--best that money from the biggest animation studio in the world can buy. As with most American animation, the best bits are often the comedy sketches: Falstaff dumbed down, all the fart and crap jokes meant to amuse an African Prince Hal without the wit, or implied criminality (petty thievery, bribery, exploitation of the prince's royal status in every way possible).

I keep hearing critics praise the background art and character design. Don't know if said critics ever noticed the background art to Japanese anime, where the very leaves of a tree seem to be painstakingly painted in (even the dappled sunlight in a relatively 'minor' work like Yoshifumi Kondo's Whispers of the Heart (1995) seem expressive, mysterious, beautiful); and then there's Hayao Miyazaki's creature design in films like Nausicaa, of theValley of the Wind (1984) or Spirited Away (2001). The Ohmu, No-Face--need I say more? The artwork in this movie doesn't even match Disney's own gold standard--Clyde Geronimi's 1959 Sleeping Beauty, which achieved the illuminated grandeur of a stained-glass window from a Gothic cathedral...

So--a Disney classic, deserving of 3D treatment? Not a big fan of the process myself; to date I can count all the decent 3D features I've seen on the fingers of one hand. Sure, it deserves this particular kind of abuse; meanwhile Scorsese's Hugo on second viewing is as complex and lovely and evocative as ever. If I had to spend my precious holiday dollars on a movie, I'd spend it on that film instead.

First published in Businessworld, 12.15.11

Letters to Juliet (Gary Winick), 2010

Can you feel the love tonight?

She's gorgeous. Every time she enters the frame she lights it up; it's as if the camera operator had collapsed in an apoplectic fit (“What sentimental crap!”) and, clawing at the camera as he went down, swung the lens at the sun. She's tall, regally tall, the height of queens (and kings, even) with cheekbones to match, and when she moves it's with a tilted head, suggesting her intensely focused interest on whatever life or the world is presenting to her at the moment (you, for instance). Her voice is delicate yet level--you can tell she's a sensible intelligence softened by love, by compassion. Her eyes are the startling blue of a high mountain lake you chance upon while hiking, and when she smiles--dear God, when she smiles that brilliant, wide-open smile--you're willing to take on the world and everyone in it, just to have her smile at you again.

Vanessa Redgrave is a wonderful actress--reportedly a tremendous one in the theater (alas, I've never had the good fortune to catch her onstage), and a striking presence on the big screen. Even in a largely wordless role as Ann Boleyn in Fred Zinneman's A Man for All Seasons (1966) her bright eyes and wide smile made her stand out (can you imagine if they actually gave her lines?). In Michael Apted's criminally underrated Agatha (1979) her role is essentially a long sustained joke, wherein we are asked to believe that someone with the charisma and stature of Vanessa Redgrave (playing Agatha Christie) can manage to hide herself away in a health spa without anyone noticing--and she pulls it off, too. Even more unlikely, she makes us believe she can be attracted to Dustin Hoffman (never an obvious romantic choice), perhaps even fall in love with him, that he is in fact worthy of her considerable attention.

We see her here and there, once in a while, and it's never enough. A haunting Ruth Wilcox in James Ivory's Howard's End ((1992), an amusingly bitchy Max (short for Maxine) in Brian De Palma's Mission Impossible (1996). She even contributed a vast amount of gravitas and conviction to the ending of Joe Wright's Atonement (2007)--more than it deserved, I thought, because the whole movie was essentially a fraud.

She's still doing it, still turning sows' ears into silk purses. In Gary Winick's Letters to Juliet a young girl named Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) travels to Verona on her honeymoon and is promptly abandoned by her restaurateur husband Victor (Gael Garcia Bernal), who is pursuing various wine and cheese suppliers. Left with nothing else to do, Sophie chances upon The Juliet Club, a group of 'secretaries' who answer letters written to Juliet. Sophie herself finds and answers a letter written years before, in 1957, by a young English girl named Claire; seems she had abandoned Lorenzo, the love of her life, because she was afraid to commit to him as a girl of fifteen. Imagine Sophie's surprise to find the fifteen-year-old has grown into a graceful grandmother (Redgrave) who has come to Verona (thanks to Sophie's letter) with her grandson Charlie (Christopher Egan) to look for her lost Lorenzo. Claire invites Sophie along for the ride, and Sophie gladly accepts; she's intrigued by Claire, the same time she's irritated by Claire's stuffed cabbage of a son Charlie, who disapproves of all this 'long-lost love' foolishness (far as he's concerned there's only one man for his grandmother, who died years ago).

Redgrave takes what is essentially a plot function and brings it to warm, breathing life. Her Claire has seen years of suffering; you see it on her careworn face, her at times tired expression, her often calm blue gaze. At the same time she hasn't given up on the possibilities that life offers; when she flashes that million-watt smile, you know she's up for some naughtiness, if there's any to be had. She definitely hasn't lost her sense of humor--when the group meets an especially decrepit Lorenzo (the computer threw up over seventy of them in all), she has the alarmed-yet-delighted look of a sister trying to tiptoe away from a sorority prank gone wrong.

As for the rest of the movie--forget about it. Gary Winick directs by the numbers, though he does have the sense to hire Marco Pontecorvo (son of legendary filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo) to shoot the various gorgeous Veronan and Tuscan landscapes (I've got a theory about Italian cinematographers: that they basically set up their cameras and lights all morning, break off at noon, take long, leisurely lunches till around four in the afternoon, when the day has entered its magic hour--when sunlight is at its most beautiful--which is why their films look so ravishing. That, or they smear extra-virgin olive oil on their lenses). Seyfried has huge eyes and pretty lashes to bat over them, but she's paired with Egan's Charlie, who is what can only be charitably called a wet noodle, and you know he's a wet noodle because (please skip the rest of this and all of the next paragraph if you plan to see the picture) when she's dumping Victor and Gael Garcia Bernal puts on a hangdog look, he's so expressively pathetic you wish she'd dump Charlie instead (Yes, her fiancee ignored her throughout the picture but--look at him! Those pouting lips, the sad, Spaniel eyes!). Victor is so passionate about his wines and cheeses you know he'd be a good match for Sophie who, at least in my book, has a bigger, hairier pair than Charlie.

Of course Claire finds her Lorenzo, and of course he'll turn out to be Franco Nero (Redgrave's own long-lost lover--they secretly married, after years of separation, in 2006), and of course he'll be riding a white horse (whiskey commercials, anyone?), but even with this cornball moment Redgrave finds the truth in her character--half a minute before, while Lorenzo was riding up, Claire is caught in a fit of panic, and begs to be taken away. “He knew me when I was a girl of fifteen!” she says, terrified of the enormity of the moment, and we're both enthralled and terrified with her, hearts racing in time with his approaching gallop. One wishes Redgrave had a more productive career--she hasn't really worked with a lot of great directors, or done that many great films, she's really made more of a mark on the stage than on the big screen--but we're grateful for what we have gotten so far, even this deeply heartfelt performance in a nothing of a movie. 

First published in Businessworld, 6.17.2010