cinema

Western promises

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The title should already give it away: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is not the kind of movie you watch in order to find out what happens at the end. If that’s why you go to the movies, don’t see this film. If you tend to use the words “pretentious” and “artsy” fairly often when talking about films you didn’t like, don’t see this film. If slow equals boring when it comes to movies as far as you’re concerned, don’t see this film. If you’re hoping for gunslinging action, don’t see this film.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

However, do see this film if you want to see a beautifully written and shot, psychologically fascinating, immensely atmospheric and deeply sad movie, and especially if you’re interested in good acting. Down to the last part, The Assassination has an impressively talented cast; for instance, even the few scenes that focus on Garrett Dillahunt’s Ed Miller (I’ve been a fan of his ever since watching Deadwood) tell volumes in themselves. But the film stands and falls with the two title characters, and they both carry their share of the load with distinction. I’d only seen Casey Affleck in the Ocean’s Double-Digit films, where it’s difficult to judge his acting, but his Robert Ford is a complex, riveting creation: in turn wheedling, puffed up, disturbing, pathetic, deluded, but finally truly tragic, he’s a relative of Matt Damon’s Tom Ripley. At one point James asks him: “Do you want to be like me? Or do you want to be me?” Their relationship recalls that of Tom Ripley and Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law) in Anthony Minghella’s movie, but it goes further than that. And Ford’s longing, loathing looks at Jesse James carry so much.

I must admit that I am also becoming quite the Brad Pitt fan. I used to think that he was a star, but not much of an actor – and there are films where you need stars. It was only in Babel that I recognised he could play a part that was in no way that of a movie star. In that film I forgot for the first time that he’s a pretty boy, and I saw him as the character. The star quality is back in The Assassination, but it needs to be – Jesse James is a myth, so Pitt has to portray that facet of the character – and it’s made deeper and richer by Pitt’s performance. This quasi-mythic outlaw is also a paranoid, superstitious and at times cruel and petty bastard, and he’s got a deep streak of self-loathing. When he turns his back on Ford for the last time to wipe the dust of a picture, we’re basically seeing a suicide at least as much as a murder. While James is no Christ figure, Ford is as necessary as Judas to complete the narrative – and to some extent this is because James lacks the courage himself to end it all, nor to live on. It’s by no means clear whether Robert Ford is really the coward that the title suggests.

I don’t want to go on too much, because otherwise this blog entry will rival the film in length. If you don’t mind slow, long films, if you don’t mind portentousness, if you think that the western genre can do tragedy successfully; if you don’t mind hearing the same three pieces of music repeated frequently (and they fit very well), if you don’t mind artsy choices in the photography, editing and writing. Or simply if you want to see Nick Cave hamming it up with a guitar in a Brad Pitt movie. If any of these apply, go and see the film.

Second chances

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Yesterday I started watching Miami Vice, Michael Mann’s recent film update of the quintessential ’80s neon series. I’d seen it at the cinema, and while I’d enjoyed the gorgeous visuals, I’d been rather underwhelmed on the whole. Now that I’m seeing it on DVD (in a slightly longer version), I like it a lot more. Some of that is probably down to the lack of expectations on my part. (I’ve talked about my Mann-love here before), some of it may be due to the Michael Mann atmosphere: his films tend to have a strong streak of loneliness going through them, which may not work as well in a packed cinema.

It’s rare that my appreciation of a film changes from “meh…” to something better on repeat viewings. The opposite happens a bit more frequently, but it’s still fairly unlikely. But sometimes I see a movie at the cinema and something about it stays with me. SOmehow my brain knows it needs to give this film a second chance. And sometimes it’s those films that I end up liking most.

Just for the record: 12 Monkeys was a film that I needed to see two or three times to like.

And now, for your appreciation, some more Mann love:

Brokeback Speedboat

… yet there’s method in’t

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On the Waterfront is another one of those films that are parodied so often (at least the “I coulda been a contender” scene) that you feel you’ve already seen it. At least I did – and boy, was I wrong.

I’d previously seen that other big Kazan flick starring Marlon Brando: A Streetcar Named Desire. The latter is definitely a great film, but I must admit that I sometimes find Tennessee Williams too much of a drama queen. I expected similar high-class melodrama from On the Waterfront but was startled by the movie’s stark realism, both in its writing and its acting. So often, films from the ’40s and ’50s, especially films featuring sexuality and violence, seem rather arch these days. Even when they’re supposed to be realistic, they feel somewhat stiff and stagey.

Not so with Waterfront. Even the child actors are convincing (which is rare enough). One thing that helps the film’s realistic feel is that so much of it is filmed on location. None of the fake sets and back projection that you get in most films of the time. In fact, the movie has an almost documentary feel to it.

All in all, there were only two things that didn’t quite work for me, pulling me out of the realistic atmosphere. The first of these was the ending; I couldn’t really buy the scene where the badly beaten Brando walks down the dock, his fractured ribs probably sticking in his lungs like so many splinters. That one wasn’t so bad, though; what struck me more was Brando’s ex-boxer makeup which made him look like a Neanderthal wearing heavy mascara.

Cromagnon out on the town

Art School Confidential

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I usually don’t mind characters that do unlikeable things. One of the reasons why I like Six Feet Under as much is because it doesn’t ingratiate itself to the audience. The protagonists’ flaws are part of what makes the series what it is.

Nevertheless, with all the things that happen in the last two seasons of the series, I must say that I came to find Claire’s character arc fairly grating at times. The art school self-centredness and pretentiousness is obviously shown in a critical light, but even with that distancing mechanism I feel so often that someone should shake Claire, or failing that, someone should slap her. Interestingly enough, though, she’s now become so irritating that I even feel a bit of sympathy for Russell, her git of an ex. And that’s saying something. And ironically, only as Claire becomes the art school bitch of the end of season 4 and beginning of season 5 do I find her art visually interesting. Hmm.

 It’s art, innit?

Yesterday, we watched Garden State, which I hadn’t seen before. Since the film was quite the indie darling at the time, and everyone and their grandmother raved about it, I won’t say too much. I liked it, and I think I’ll like it even more on a second viewing. What struck me was how similar the plot was to Elizabethtown (which came later), but whereas I only somewhat liked Elizabethtown when I saw it at the cinema but afterwards came to feel more and more that it was phoney as hell, Garden State manages to pull off the quirkiness much better – mainly because it’s not infatuated with it, as so many ‘quirky’ indie flicks are. At its heart it’s about real people with real feelings, whereas Cameron Crowe’s variation on the theme was about ‘characters’.

P.S.: I’d be scared by my father too if he looked just like Bilbo Baggins…

Scary Ian Holm

Pretty as a picture

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Actually, that’s not really accurate. Terence Malick’s Days of Heaven isn’t pretty – it’s beautiful. The cinematography has a grandeur that is breathtaking at times. There are films that you’d want to frame and hang on the wall, and all of Malick’s works have that quality.

Happy couple doing couply things

What about the rest of the film, though? Does it just look good but is a waste of time otherwise? Apparently, Days of Heaven was criticised for its muted emotions. Indeed, we don’t get the extremes of passion that the love-triangle plot would suggest. No shouting and screaming, and even during the film’s scenes of violence there’s a certain distanced quality of defeat and resignation. Which I liked a lot, thuogh. So much emotion in films is melodrama, going to 11, but a) this isn’t necessarily true to life and b) I wouldn’t want this sort of emotional forte fortissimo in every film. Not every tragedy of jealousy should be Othello.

The protagonists in Days of Heaven seem so know from the first that real happiness is likely to be out of their reach, that the best they can hope for is a momentary reprieve from the dull despair, of poverty, of illness, of loneliness. Melodramatic passion is an indulgence none of them believe in. Their emotions, or at least their expression of their feelings,  have been dulled by various kinds of deprivation.

This dullness is encapsulated neatly in the narration by the teenage character Linda. She’s a kindred spirit to Sissy Spacek’s Holly in Badlands, although without that character’s naive romantic imagination. As with Holly, nothing would seem to be quite real to Linda. Bad things happen, people die, that’s the way it is. No use crying about it. Fair or unfair doesn’t come into it.

Day of the Locust

I’m not sure I get the film’s ending, though. Although the narration’s focus lies with the lovers, we get a curious continuation of Linda’s story that ends abruptly. I’m certain there are film buffs who could explain the purpose of this not-really-epilogue to me. I could come up with a number of interpretations, but I’m not sure any of them would ring true. Perhaps I should just watch the film again, though, and become caught up in the sheer depth and width of the images all over.

Newsflash: Death cheats at chess!

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From Lowell Bergman to Ingmar Bergman. (Classy, huh?) Yesterday we watched Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. Call me odd, but I find his movies entertaining. They get a bad rap for being a film nerd’s wet dream (but actually somewhat boring), but I think that many of the parodies of his style are unfair.

At least in the two Bergman movies I’ve seen so far – Wild Strawberries in addition to The Seventh Seal – there’s always been a gentle sense of humour that puts the more lofty philosophical and metaphysical passages into perspective. For every scene with the knight Antonius Block contemplating life, death and the existence (or lack thereof) of God, there’s a scene with his more cynical, down-to-earth squire Jöns, puncturing the musings of his more pompous master. And beyond all this, there’s nothing boring, overly intellectual or pretentiously existential in the very real dread of the scenes with the flagellants or the distrurbed girl about to be burnt at the stake.

And there’s something refreshingly sly about both Block and Death cheating at the chess game they’re playing, even if they cheat for different reasons.

But, fair or not, without Bergman we wouldn’t have scenes like this (wait for a bit to get to the Seventh Seal bit):

P.S.: By the way, I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to give away that they both win in the end.

It’s a Mann’s world

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Yesterday we watched The Insider, Michael Mann’s 1999 film about whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand, 60 Minutes and the evil machinations of big US tobbaco. I like Mann’s cool jazz style, the calm rhythm of his movies. Watching The Insider for the fourth or fifth time, though, I was struck at how much the director’s cinematic world is a male one.

Insiders inside a car (duh…)

Like in several of Mann’s movies, it’s not so much that there isn’t any sympathy for the women (in this case especially Wigand’s wife Liane, played by Diane Venora), but that the film’s focus always remains with the man, and as a result the women are seen in terms of whether they remain loyal to their men or not. It’s really weird – if I write it like that, it makes Mann sound like the worst misogynist ever. However, I don’t think that’s quite fair. Venora’s character in Heat (this time she’s together with the Pacino character) also decides to walk out on her man because his job is more important than his family. It’s not that he doesn’t love her, but he’s obsessed with what he does. Perhaps that’s why the films aren’t straightforward exercises in sexism – Mann’s men are obsessive-compulsive, they choose their duties like lonesome cowboys. There’s something glamorous and admirable to the male protagonists, but at the same time they’re stuck in adolescence and in the belief that they don’t need anyone else, except the other boys they play their lethal games with.

By comparison, the women live in the real world much more than the men. Things aren’t as clear cut for them. Venora’s Justine Hanna in Heat realises that she will always come second to her husband. Her Liane Wigand knows that Jeffrey (fantastically acted by Russell Crowe, by the way) will not give up his quixotic quest against big tobacco, not even for the sake of his family. She comes off worse, perhaps, than other women in Mann, because Jeffrey Wigand is so clearly doing the right thing. But there is understanding in the film for her plight.

In the hands of a lesser director and actress, Liane and Justine would simply be shrews who screw over their good-guy husbands. It’s difficult to completely shake the feeling that they are disloyal and selfish. But they have a strength and a dignity that makes us look and think twice.

But it doesn’t change that, at its heart, Michael Mann’s world is a man’s world indeed.

Tom and Jamie,/Sitting in a Car…

Sniffle…

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Since I feel like I’ve come down with something, I’m going to take it easy today. No long speeches, no pretentious analyses of videogame narratives.

Just a trailer for one of the films I’ve been looking forward to most.

Oh, and it’s got that coward Jack McCall and Francis Wolcott in it. Playing the same character.

It happened at the movies… (3)

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(… although technically that should be (4), since my entry on The Departed was also part of this tightly plotted, carefully laid out series. Ah well.)

I wish I could remember the title of this movie…

Christopher Nolan made an impression on me with his second film, Memento, which I thought clever, affecting and fascinating. Insomnia, his follow-up, didn’t do much for me, well crafted and acted tough as it was. It didn’t have the conviction of the Norwegian original, sitting uncomfortably between Hollywood thriller and harsh morality play.

The Prestige is probably Nolan’s best film since Memento. His reboot of the Batman franchise was good and intelligent, but its plot was predictable. The Prestige, a film about 2+ rival magicians at the turn of the century is at least as cleverly conceived and told as his amnesia thriller. Judging from the plot of the original novel (as given on Wikipedia), the film adaptation has been changed quite a bit, so it’s all the more surprising and impressive to find such an intricately structured, yet elegantly executed plot in the movie.

What struck me most was Nolan’s witty use of repeated motifs that, in a second viewing, might look like obvious hints at the twists in the movie. Every element is carefully laid out, and the film plays fair, yet when the viewer thinks he’s figured it out and smugly leans back, chances are he’ll realise half an hour later that he’s underestimated Nolan’s Chinese box.

And apart from The Prestige‘s cleverness (which has a slightly arch quality to it, just as some of the voiceovers), there’s something admirably goofy about casting David Bowie as an aging Nicholas Tesla, perhaps the truest magician of the piece yet the least mysterious, least self-dramatising character in the film.

Is there life after Mars?

I’ll throw you the whip…

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Today’s entry is very short (for a change). Since I went on at great length yesterday about appreciating great craftsmanship, here’s an example of brilliant genre cinema that isn’t deep or existential – but it may just be the best film in its genre.

I still get the same kick out of watching Raiders of the Lost Ark as I did when I first saw it, even though Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was my first Indy movie. Arguably, it’s one of the most fun films ever.

And who couldn’t love a film that has this scene in it?