A Serious Man: A Mensch in Peril

I've long been cool on the films of Joel and Ethan Coen. Their most lauded works, Fargo, Miller's Crossing, and Best Picture winner No Country for Old Men didn't impress me. Sure, the films were made competently, the writing was of a good standard, the films all looked good on a technical level, but none of them hit me emotionally. Even the film of theirs I'd found most enjoyable, Barton Fink, left me with nothing. What I did admire in their films were the performances, which often had moments of very quiet, subtle comedy, and I liked that so many of them were archetypes, through and through, from John Turturro's pretentious playwright in Barton Fink, to Tim Robbins' gee-whiz wunderkind and Jennifer Jason Leigh's acid-tongued Girl Friday in The Hudsucker Proxy, to Francis McDormand's mother/cop in Fargo, the characters were types and cartoons almost, but living, breathing ones. But what kept me cold from the Coen Brothers was their seeming lack of passion. I never felt anything while watching their films, and though films can do a great many things, moving an audience is one of the greatest and in my mind, most vital. I had also been somewhat unimpressed by the Coens most popular, devotee-making film The Big Lebowski. I saw it once, I found it mildly amusing and surprisingly sloppy. I saw it a second time, this time in a movie theater, and I liked it a little more but still wasn't crazy about it, and then a funny thing happen. The film had found a way into my mind, and I started to think about it, every element, and a new film seemed to emerge. I saw it again and suddenly the film opened up for me. The jokes were funny, the story compelling, the mise-en-scène (oh yeah, I'm pulling it out in paragraph one) deliriously brilliant. I had fallen in love with the film, and where repeat viewings of their other films only cemented my distaste for them, familiarity with The Big Lebowski made me appreciate the complexities and nuance of every scene. Though I was far from joining the cult of quoters and White Russian drinking attendees of the annual Lebowskifest, I had found an entree into two of modern cinema's most critically adored figures. But I don't just think it's me who was different, the Coens operate in that films (and their 2008 espionage satire Burn After Reading) in a different manner, allowing emotion or comedy to trump perfection. So many of their films feel so sterile to me, as if they are dispassionately saying, "Yes, this would be the most effect shot here, for this long, according to this guide to tension we purchased," and because of that they lacked air to feel, for the audience to project onto the screen any part of them selves.

I give this account of my history with the Coens as context for my thoughts on their new film A Serious Man, which opened in New York today and will open across the country in the following weeks. My immediate reaction upon seeing the film was that this is the Coen Brothers' masterpiece. Before I sat down in that screening room I wouldn't have considered that the Coen Brothers' were capable of making a masterpiece, and two hours later I had been moved, I had laughed, I had been shocked, and most of all I had become reverent of the Coens.

The following paragraph contains mild spoilers for A Serious Man.

The film opens with quote "Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you." The quote is from medieval French Rabbi Rashi, and the scene that follows it is a completely disconnected story of a ghost who comes to visit a poor family. This scene, spoken entirely in Hebrew Yiddish, shot in the 1.33:1 aspect ratio, vignetted as if looking through a glass bottle, is an audacious masterstroke. I guarantee no other film owned by Universal Pictures opens with a ten minute scene in Hebrew about a ghost, particularly one as possibly confounding and head-scratching as this one. I will not attempt to explain the scene's inclusion, nor analyze it's substance, but I would point to the Rashi quote preceding it for clues as it's to it's necessary-ness. From there, after a brilliant opening credit sequence, we are thrust into the life of Larry Gopnick (Michael Stuhlbarg), a middle-aged, Jewish, College Physics Professor in Minnesota. Larry is married and has two children, one just out of High School, the other on the eve of his Bar-Mitzvah. The film is set in the mid 1960s, pot is everywhere, and the music of Jefferson Airplane pipes into Larry's son's portable radio. From this introduction, we follow Larry through an increasing serious of misfortune: his wife wants to divorce, his brother sleeps on his couch, his possible tenure is in question, and he has a Korean-American student who is trying to bribe him for a better grade. Larry wants to be a serious man, a righteous man, he wants his family together, his job secure, and he wants to be happy. When these things star piling up on him, Larry is shocked, they seem to come out of nowhere. Larry visits a Rabbi, who tells him God is everywhere, even in the parking lot outside. He sees a second Rabbi, who tells him a story about a Dentist who discovered Hebrew lettering on the inside of a goyum's teeth. He tries to visit a third Rabbi, a calm, very old man who Larry sees sitting passively at his desk. Larry is told the Rabbi is busy. "He didn't look busy!" Larry is told that the Rabbi is thinking. What the Rabbi is actually doing may be explained by a scene late in the film, but spoiling that moment would serve no purpose in this review.

No more spoilers.

There is no way to give a sense of how this film feels other than seeing it yourself. I can explain the structure, and the cinematography, and the acting and the music, but it would give no clearer a picture. This film feels like no other I've seen. Events pile on, one after another, in a way it's a portrait of life being lived, shown in the most peculiarly realistic manner possible. What I can explicate is a few of the ideas in the film. What does it mean to be good? Is being good enough? How may we forgive one another of our foibles? Why would anyone think it's a good idea to stay at the Jolly Roger?

What I believe I respond to so much in this film is the emotional connection I had with the characters. The reason I had those connections is because this film feels personal. Based on pure biological fact, this is a personal film for the Coen Brothers. They grew up in the place and time the film takes place, they are both Jewish, their parents were both Professors, but it's unfair to attempt to link their personal lives with the lives of the characters in this film. However, the personal nature relates to the effectiveness directly, for once, there is feeling in their work. I have not just been told a story, I have been shown an emotional journey, and shared in it. This makes the film better, the funny parts funnier, and the film making more impressive.

Roger Deakins, the Coens' usual cinematographer, has never been better. The performances across the board are terrific, particularly from lead Michael Stuhlbarg, who creates a likable, put upon man, and has helped create an iconic character. Like the Coens other films, Larry is an archetype: a middle class, suburban, intellectual Jew, and by conforming (in some respects) to an archetype, they're able to explore a number situations where the audience must know how Larry feels, without having to explain those thoughts in narration or dialogue.

This is a film that rewards repeat viewings. It doesn't trip over itsself to explain things to the audience, sometimes it is purposefully ambiguous, extending to the ending of the film, one of the most surprising and masterful I have ever seen. The Coen Brothers can now count me in their camp of admirers. A Serious Man is a great film, and a masterpiece, and I couldn't be happier to say it.

Capitalism: A Love Story and Big Fan

This is perhaps Michael Moore's best film, both in terms of message, and form. Moore's never really gotten much praise as a filmmaker because what he does is deceptively simple. Sure, there are the obvious touches, the sing-songy sarcastic narration, the feigned shock, the melodramatic use of music from other films and ironic use of songs, but what's hidden between those things is a very delicately weaved film. Moore's movies are episodic by nature, but he has a keen sense of when and where and how long those episodes should be and it creates a non-fiction film in which a narrative emerges. Maybe it's not a narrative in a story sense, but in an emotional and informative sense there is an arc to the film, and this one, more than any others, leaves the audience in a state of determination and will to action. I would argue that Moore is not a documentary filmmaker in as much as he's an essayist. Like any great essayist, he has complete control of his medium, his use of image and sound in place of text on a page, in presenting a thesis (In this case, Capitalism does not work), giving context for that thesis and then leveling reason after reason why that thesis is so. Of course it's more elegant in the film than that reductive analysis, but at their essence, that is what his films do. So the measure of his films is how persuasive they are and in what ways do they make you think about the subject (or subjects) explored in the film. It's in this regard that Capitalism: A Love Story is so successful, and I think it's one of the best movies of the year.


Written and directed by Robert Siegel, former editor of The Onion and screenwriter of The Wrestler, Big Fan, like Siegel's earlier film, explores a less glamorous part of sports culture. In this case a New York Giants fan named Paul (Patton Oswalt). Paul lives to love the Giants, and has little else in his life. The film is very well observed in the details of how Paul life is consumed by his fandom and how much he defines himself based on that fandom. There are great scenes of Paul writing and rehearsing the inane rants he gives on the local Sports Talk Radio Show he frequently calls into ("Hey, it's Paul from Staten Island..."), only pausing to let customers out of the parking garage he works in, sitting in a harshly lit booth pouring over notebook pages filled with cliche analysis and insults about the last or nearest game. Oswalt is great, as is Kevin Corrigan as his Giants co-fan and only friend. Siegel allows the film to be dark and sad in place of comedy, though the film is often very funny, and lets the characters go in realistic and decidedly noncommercial directions. However great many elements of the film are though, I feel like Siegel could have pushed it even further and gone darker and explored the notion of the obsessive fan who lives for nothing else even more. As it stands now the film is very good, but there's always a feeling that it could have been great.

All is love.

Watch this space for thoughts on Spike Jonze's film of Where the Wild Things Are, coming tomorrow. In case anyone' is wondering, it's a masterpiece that is deeply emotionally complex, astounding in countless ways, and one of the great films about childhood. I feel no hesitation in saying it will become a classic. More than superlatives later.

The Informant!: Husking for the Truth!

A middle aged man, paunchy but not fat, with a mustache, wearing glasses and a hairpiece walks into an office building in a slightly too big grey suite. "Hello" he greets secretaries and colleagues. The man walks into an office, shuts the door and closes the blinds. Then he sits. What those secretaries and colleagues don't know is that he's an informant (an Informant!) and that he's wearing a wire that will provide the FBI with evidence of a price-fixing scandal in the lysine business sure to cause waves across the world. This man has a secret. This man is going behind the back of his company to expose their illegal operations, in the eyes of the law this man is a hero. This man has a family, three children, two of the adopted as he was himself. This man has made a home for himself and a place in the world based on his whits and his hard work. This man is the best of America. This man is also a liar. A pathological one. And he's real.

Steven Soderbergh's latest film The Informant! stars Matt Damon as the titular tattler. Damon plays Mark Whitacre, bio-chemist and big wig at Archer Daniels Midland, out of Decatur, Illinois and the film tells the true (I swear!) story of Whitacre's unraveling during his co-operation with the FBI. The story is real, and is thus, out there, but the film's major joy comes from the way in which Sodbergh and Bourne Ultimatum screenwriter Scott Z. Burns, working from Kurt Eichenwald's book (Eichenwald's own story is worthy of a film), parcel out more and more information about Whitacre. One way in which they acheive a state of grand misdirection is by employing Damon as Whitacre as the narrator to the film. Immediately, the audience is engaged with Whitacre and grow to identify, and like him through his stream of conscious inner monologues and veneer of the good, family man setting out to right a wrong in his life. Doing what Mark Whitacre is doing as a man in his position is noble, but it's only one facet to his life. Others come fast and hard as the film progresses, and it's best that we find those things out as the other characters in the film do. I will say though, that I never expected the 847 area code change to be a plot point in a film.

Every frame in the film is Soderbergh's, and clearly, but it is Damon's brilliant performance that is the key to the movie's success. It's a credit to Damon's ability that seeing it a second time, knowing what we know (and don't know) at the end, that the film not only holds together but becomes a deeper, richer, funnier and more intriguing study of this guy (whoever he is) who, though we hear some of his thoughts, has an entire different world inside his head, as we all do, though his is constantly spinning, identity behind identity.

One of my favorite things in the entire movie is the way Soderbergh (operating his own Red One Digital Cinema camera) does the reoccurring tracking shots of Whitacre walking into his office. They have a jitteryness to them that reminds me of '70s movies when cameras became light enough to gun it on a dolly or a Steadicam, and there's a real sense of movement and the physical effects of that movement that give the shots an energy that adds to Whitacre's stream of conscious voice over and greeting of personnel. It's almost as if Whitacre is racing to his office to be alone again with his own mind, to attend to some mental business and then get into character as a rising corporate star, a spy, a family man, a criminal, a sane human being.

Jennifer's Body: Blood. Sucking.

A young girl is lured into a van by a struggling emo band who thinks she's a virgin. They drive to a forest, and following satanic instructions they found on the internet, stab and bleed her as a sacrifice to Satan, in hopes that Satan will reward them with a career. Little do they know that the virgin they picked is anything but, and according to their satanic instructions, this means the girl will be given demonic powers and feast on flesh for the rest of her days. The entire idea isn't a bad one, there's feminist implications, room for interesting gore and dramatic weight from the dynamic between two friends where one is clearly the dominant force, but Karyn Kusama's Diablo Cody-penned Jennifer's Body squanders it on cheap jokes, sluggish pacing, limp writing and negative-adjective emo songs. The reason Cody's Juno worked is simple and clear now, Jason Reitman. With Reitman there to find the right way to film Cody's slang-filled script, it came off as genuine and evolved into a sweet, touching film. Jennifer obviously isn't going for sweet or touching, it's going for thrills and laughs and it fails on both accounts because Karyn Kusama is less adept at filmmaking than Reitman, and she squanders what little charm the screenplay has and the, for the most part, excellent cast she has at her disposal. Megan Fox is fine, she's not great, but she's far from the humorless stick with boobs that most people make her out to be. I've only seen her in one movie before this, Robert Weide's very funny How To Lose Friends and Alienate People, where she played a vacuous, vapid, vacuum of cocaine and praise hording young actress, perhaps a less image conscious version of herself. There, I thought she was perfect; she was as mean and heartlessly aloof as she was meant to be, but it's obvious her career has fallen into her lap not for her talent but for her looks. Having said that, she's perfect for the part, Jennifer is a mean, heartlessly aloof high school beauty, only this time she literally eats people alive. Given better direction and a more accomplished filmmaker, she could have been one of the classic horror queens, a grotesque, blood thirsty extrapolation of the high school bitch, but here she's given some dark eye shadow, unzips her sweatshirt and is morphed into a figure resembling the one on the poster of Pink Floyd's The Wall, then quickly shrouded in shadow to conceal the limited budget of the film. Amanda Seyfried, a very talented young actress, tries as she might to make the arc of her character work, but with glaringly obvious plot holes, and little of a character, she comes out empty handed. She's left screaming and scrunching her face without purpose or a safety net of a character. Likewise, cameos from Juno's J.K. Simmons and the ever reliable Amy Sedaris offer nothing but the thought of how disappointed the two must have been when they saw this final product vomited onto the screen. Without cohesive structure, intelligent writing and adept direction, it seems Jennifer could stand to learn a thing or two from Juno.

Together

Roger Ebert on "Wolverine"

Oh, the film is well-made. Gavin Hood, the director, made the great film "Tsotsi" (2005) and the damned good film "Rendition" (2007) before signing on here. Fat chance "Wolverine" fans will seek out those two. Why does a gifted director make a film none of his earlier admirers would much want to see? That's how you get to be a success in Hollywood. When you make a big box-office hit for mostly fanboys, you've hit the big time. Look at Justin Lin with "Fast & Furious."

Such films are assemblies of events. There is little dialogue, except for the snarling of threats, vows and laments, and the recitation of essential plot points. Nothing here about human nature. No personalities beyond those hauled in via typecasting. No lessons to learn. No joy to be experienced. Just mayhem, noise and pretty pictures. I have been powerfully impressed by film versions of Batman, Spider-Man, Superman, Iron Man and the Iron Giant. I wouldn't even walk across the street to meet Wolverine.

But wait! -- you say. Doesn't "X-Men Origins" at least provide a learning experience for Logan about the origins of Wolverine? Hollow laugh. Because we know that the modern Wolverine has a form of amnesia, it cannot be a spoiler for me to reveal that at the end of "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," he forgets everything that has happened in the film. Lucky man.

link

Beyond the immaculate writing, he brings up something that is so common, which is promising directors who seem to both sell out and lose their talent in the process.

Directors take note, Pineapple Express is how you "sell out."

The Soloist: Failing to Take Flight

In 2005, I began to see advertised a new film adaptation of Jane Austen's classic Pride & Prejudice. From the advertisements, it appeared to be an unnecessary, perfunctory adaptation of a novel that had been adapted many a time for the screen, both silver and small, often times inelegantly, as with the clunky 1940 big-budget MGM adaptation ("You have too much PRIDE, sir!""And you, too much PREJUDICE!"). This new version appeared to be suffering from the same wrongheadedness, casting period-piece favorite Keira Knightley in the lead as the, ehem, prideful Elizabeth Bennet. I thought nothing of the film after seeing the advertisement, and forgot about it. Then the film opened in November of 2005, with strong reviews and praise for Knightley's performance. Out of curiosity, and strong optimism, I decided to see the film. What I saw, almost immediately, was a filmmaker interested in cinema. The film opens with a long tracking shot, taking us inside the Bennet household, in and out of rooms, through both the upstairs and downstairs worlds. It was a breathtaking introduction to a filmmaker I'd come to grow quite fond of over the next few years.


In that film, and his 2007 follow up Atonement, based on the Ian McEwan novel of the same name, the director Joe Wright carved out a place for himself as one of the pre-eminent directors in England. Here was a young, headstrong filmmaker who was willing to take chances both filmicly and thematically, chances that set him apart from his peers, and fellow "period film" purveyors. Wright was able to bring life to ideas, filling them with emotion and grandeur that never crossed over into being overwrought or mannered. He was able to draw performances from young actors not seen in any of their previous work, creating with Ms. Knightley two of the most classical, subtle, and moving female screen performances this decade has yet seen. He was able to playfully arrange actors in a frame, twisting them around one another, exploring screenspace in ways few filmmakers attempt to, and draw emotion from both his actors and his camera.

It was with this great regard and anticipation that I brought to Mr. Wright's third film, The Soloist, based again on a novel, this time the non-fiction novel of the same name by The Los Angeles Times' Steve Lopez. The film centers on Mr. Lopez (here played by Robert Downey Jr.) and his discovery of a mentally unstable former Julliard cellist, Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, Jr. (Jamie Foxx), now living homeless on the streets of Los Angeles, and follows their subsequent friendship.

Wright directs the film from a screenplay by Susannah Grant, who chooses to structure the film around Lopez, who then brings the audience into Ayers world, a convention that has grown tiresome, as studios feel it necessary to lure in the audience with the stable, not coincidentally white character that they can hopefully identify with. It's a convention that's insulting in many ways, but also makes for a far less interesting film. This is, or it should be, a parallel story of two men forging a friendship, one providing attention and stability where there was none, and one providing a great skill at communicating through music. Part of the problem is that we cannot identify with Lopez because the screenplay, embellished by Mr. Downey's performance, saddles him with all kinds of tangetical problems, his industry is dying, he's divorced, and he's constantly being covered in urine, both his own and that of a coyote. I suppose this is to make us feel like both Ayers and Lopez have problems so their connection isn't just a one sided affair, but what Ayers suffers from is debilitating mental illness, whereas Lopez just comes off as a wealthy dick.

The other major problem with the film is the music, or should I say the lack there of. For a film about a friendship forged through music, we hear so very little of it, and even less from Ayers himself. After Lopez writes a column about Ayers, and mentions that the violin he plays only has two strings, a reader sends in a cello, and when Lopez presents it to Ayers, he hears for the first time the genius that Ayers has musically. On screen, we can see Lopez is feeling something, which we take, or would if it were written better, as something he hasn't done in quite some time because of the aforementioned "problems." While we can see Lopez experiencing the music through Downey's performance, the film robs the audience of that same experience, because not long after Ayers begins playing his Beethoven piece, an orchestra joins in, swelling the music to, well, a louder place, and Mr. Wright's camera swells too, craning up from the tunnel where Ayers sleeps and plays, to the sky, following CGI birds gliding over Los Angeles (get it, the music is soaring!), intercut with the pained expressions of Foxx and the tearing face of Downey. It's a disappointing moment because anyone whose ever delved into classical music at all knows that experiencing music like that played unadorned can be a transformative experience in and of itself. But because we're robbed of hearing that, and distracted by Wright's CGI bird visualizations, we don't share in Lopez's transformative experience, one that cements his bond to Ayers, making his being moved unrelatable, and thus fails to create the interest we should have in their connection.

That scene lies in stark contrast to the one transcendent moment of the film, when Lopez arranges for Ayers to sit in with him alone on the rehearsal of the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the beautiful Walt Disney Concert Hall. As the orchestra begins its Beethoven piece, we literally go inside Ayers' mind as he listens, and in a Fantasia-esque touch, see colors, dancing to the music, onscreen for minutes. It's perhaps the most astonishing moment I've seen on screen this in several years, and it's juxtaposition with what surrounds it highlights what's so wrong with the rest of the film. It's the only moment in the film where Wright seems to be escaping the screenplay and getting at the feeling of the piece and allowing the audience to experience as the characters do, something he does more adeptly in his previous two films.

Though the screenplay is flawed, Wright is not blameless here. He trusts in the screenplay and while trying to make it fit, isn't suited to the material. Wright and Grant try to shoehorn all kinds of political relevance into the film as well, showing a montage featuring former President George W. Bush, Hurricane Katrina, has characters talk about the death of the newspaper industry, lamenting the massive homeless population in Los Angeles, and in one scene seems to be condemning Atheism, and in the next pointing out the futility of religion to the homeless population. The film tries to have it both ways like that in many respects, and it only clouds its message and separates us from the story, as with the flashbacks that run throughout the film that "explain" how Ayers got to be on the street. But these flashbacks don't illuminate anything about Ayers character or his headspace, they just provide Wright with a chance to film 1960s decor and costumes, and give Foxx a chance to show just how much range he has. Mr. Downey isn't right for the role as is written, and Catherine Keener, Stephen Root, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Tom Hollander and Nelsan Ellis are wasted in underwritten, undynamic roles.

There's no reason with a cast like this, a director like this, and the abundance of music the story calls for, for the film to be so often lifeless. Wright is a great director, and his first two films are among the best of the decade, particularly Atonement, which in that glutted year of so-called masterpieces, I thought was the standout of 2007. Here however, his material is weak, and with his first two films being derived from Jane Austen and Ian McEwan, it's not terribly surprising that when presented with an American newspaper writer as his source material, he doesn't quite connect with it. I hope that Wright returns to England and searches for the right material, because when he's at his best, unlike those fake birds, his films do indeed soar.

"Report" Report

As a little addendum to my review "Observe and Report," specifically it's subtextual commentary on the modern hero-complex afflicted male, an interview writer/director Jody Hill did with New York Magazine where he speaks about just that.

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NY Mag: You've said the film was influenced by Scorsese's The King of Comedy.

Hill: On the set, and beforehand, we were constantly talking about The King of Comedy, and, in fact, Taxi Driver, Straw Dogs, Shampoo. The end was heavily inspired by the way King of Comedy and Taxi Driver end, where it's kind of a victory but it makes you wonder: Is it a dream? Is it really a victory? Is it just kind of weird? Like the whole thing is based in realism — and then you twist it at the end and it makes people feel weird.

NY Mag: Are you mocking Bush-era heroes with this one?

Hill: We wanted to tell a good story, but the themes that run through it hopefully just represent some type of bigger picture. It's certainly not a political film by any means, but I don't think it's a disposable comedy, either, where there's no greater subtext.

NY Mag: A film like King of Comedy was really responding to its time — the rise of celebrity.

Hill: Sure — and Taxi Driver is influenced by that postwar fallout. This is definitely influenced by its time.

NY Mag: Ronnie's like one of those Reaganite kids who grew up watching Red Dawn, waiting for his chance to defend the shopping mall against the Communists.

Hill: I definitely feel like Ronnie watched those movies and took them to heart. And we play with movie clichés, like sorta pseudo–Cameron Crowe, but twisted. I hope people feel themselves caught up in a Cameron Crowe moment, but the visuals are so fucked-up that it kind of produces a really uncomfortable feeling. Like, people applaud and then they stop: "Wait, what the fuck am I applauding? He just murdered somebody."

NY Mag: It's weird when he clobbers the Middle Eastern guy on the mall for no reason...

Hill: People love that. And it's not like he has a reason. People really like that. I don't know if I understand it, but maybe that speaks to like, your earlier question about the time.

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In some ways I feel this analogous to last year's "Funny Games" (which I wrote about here a few times) as far as audience expectation being subverted in favor of commentary on those expectations, and luckily with this one it'll have more of an audience to try that out on, though whether that gets through to more than just a few people we'll have to wait to see. It also helps that it's hilarious.

Observe and Report: The Modern Male Psyche

In the first half of the year 2009, two major studios have released two comedies centered on characters whose occupation is a mall security guard. The first, released this past January, was "Paul Blart: Mall Cop," and the second, set to be released this Friday, is "Observe and Report." The first film starred Kevin James as the titular Paul Blart, a fat, oafish, bumbling man in a job which others look down at him for, but what he found to be a great source of pride. That film has become one of this years greatest financial successes, netting over one-hundred million dollars at the U.S. box office since it's opening at the beginning of the year. The second film, "Observe and Report," stars Seth Rogen as the fat, oafish head of mall security, a job which others look down on him for, but for which he finds as a great source of pride. You may ask yourself, is there a need for two movies so similar in premise? Much less two movies released mere months from one another? The answer to that is no, but while one is satisfied with being light, mediocre entertainment, the other has a greater task at hand.

"Observe and Report" is writer/director Jody Hill's second film, coming off the Sundance cult hit "The Foot Fist Way," and the HBO series "East Bound and Down." Both of Hill's earlier pieces dealt with failure, in "Foot Fist," the failure of a Tae Kwon Doe instructor with delusions of grandeur, and in "East Bound" the fall from grace of a superstar Major League pitcher. Each film in it's own way explored the chasm between their protagonists' self image and the way others perceived them. "Observe and Report" begins with that same theme, this time following a mall security guard, played by Seth Rogen, whose belief in the importance of his job and his ability to solve crime, he grossly overestimates. It is in this dark gray area where Hill begins to deconstruct the contemporary young-adult male psyche, one raised on video games, action movies, and raunchy comedies, like the very one that Rogen's Ronnie Barnhardt is in.

"Right now the world needs a fucking hero."

As the film opens, Ronnie is being called upon to investigate a flasher who has been exposing himself to women in the mall parking lot. Ronnie, a heavily medicated twenty-something with bi-polar disorder, snaps into action, assigning tasks to his group of underlings, and arrogantly dictating the terms of the investigation to his boss and the detective who's been assigned to the case, played by a craggy Ray Liotta. Having some sense of power and purpose, Ronnie immediately informs the make-up counter girl Brandi, played by Anna Faris, that there's a flasher on the loose, but assures her without prompting that he'll protect her. After Brandi becomes the next victim of the flasher, Ronnie inflates her panic and terror, and uses it to convince her to go on a date with him. Through grizzled voice-over, Ronnie talks about Brandi being the only thing worth saving, saying that he's the one who can protect her, protect the mall, and keep order in a chaotic, punishing world. Between these scenes of plot development, Hill places Ronnie's trips to a shooting range, and long, strange conversations with his alcoholic mother, played with stupor by Celia Weston, where Ronnie espouses the luck he's had with the flasher's sudden appearance, how it's given him a sense of duty, purpose, and drive.

Though the filmmakers might admit to it, Ronnie is every kid who went to see "The Dark Knight" and came out with it's sense of vigilante justice embedded into their minds. The kind of kid who spends hours shooting opponents in video games. Ronnie relates to the world like he himself is a caped crusader, operating in fantasy in lieu of actual experience, he is a few steps removed from reality. Ronnie's bi-polar disorder is merely a physicalization of that disconnect, one lived in by teenage boys locked in their rooms for hours on end absorbing online gaming, fantasy fiction and pop culture.

As with his previous work, Hill's interest lies in the complete immersion of his characters' in their delusions. For Ronnie, this happens when he decides to stop taking his bi-polar medication at a perceived high point. At this point in the film, Ronnie has gone through the tests to become a real cop, to work side by side with Liotta, and has quit his job at the mall, said farewell, and made plans for his new life and responsibility. When the plans go awry and he is rejected for the service, Ronnie's immersion in the fantasy like of hero-hood becomes complete. Unlike the levity this delusion would be treated with in most comedies, Ronnie's immersion is similar in depth and darkness to Travis Bickle's in "Taxi Driver," or Captain Willard's in "Apocalypse Now," and unlike any comedy I've seen, Ronnie's rage is not impotent but instead explodes in violent, effectively brutal ways. Ronnie's obsession with the flasher leads him to stalk to the mall, go undercover, and lose whatever shit he had in the first place. Hill's commentary is subtle, but at last he has created the perfect image of the delusional, arrogant personality that can develop as a result of the failure of the American dream. Perhaps we cannot be whatever we want to be, perhaps we can not will the world to our liking or impede on the rights of others without consequence. In Rogen's narration, Hill adds the self-aware meta touch of a character narrating a film in the way that character would want a movie about his life to be narrated, and even at one point includes Rogen screwing up, saying he'll "do that one again" in his normal voice, and then repeating the misread line in the same Batman-ish gravely voice.

Any expectation one may have going into "Observe and Report" is likely to be shattered, reshaped, and presented in a manner that is completely unexpected. How this film was produced by a major studio, at the budget it was, is anomaly that will be turned over in the years to come. Jody Hill, with the aid of his cast and his cinematographer Tim Orr, has made the most singularly unique, daring, political comedy I've seen. It may not have the heart of "Pineapple Express," but it's a work of such layered commentary and bizarre story turns, lines and performance. Yes, there were two mall cop movies released in 2009, but only one is as fresh and exciting as "Observe and Report."

November 4, 2008

Synecdoche, New York: Making Sense of a Masterpiece

This small piece of adoration appeared in an edited form on another site in a year end poll. The film will be released on DVD March 10th.

This is a mad fever-dream of a movie. Charlie Kaufman is able to simultaneously reflect and dissect life and of its stuff in an engaging, often funny, often heartbreaking fashion. It's a film so dense that on a third viewing connections are still being made, ones that you can soak in for days, weeks, months, years, lifetimes. A film you find yourself ebbing towards with a phrase, a look, a mood, or a song. "I'm just a little person, one person in a sea of many little people who are not aware of me." Bolstered by a cast of serious, precise performers, a melancholic but beautiful score by Jon Brion, and subtly masterful photography by Frederick Elmes, the film follows characters and their relationships to their absolute completion, all the while spinning back to comment on itself, ever reflective, and ever misunderstanding its own history. Kaufman has made an absolute portrait of life, so absolute because of its incompleteness. "I know you, you're the one I've waited for. Let's have some fun."

Best Movies of 2008

Others: The Flight of the Red Balloon, The Wrestler, Happy-Go-Lucky, The Band's Visit, Paranoid Park, I've Loved You So Long, Ballast, A Christmas Tale, The Foot Fist Way, Rachel Getting Married, Shotgun Stories, The Class, In Bruges, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Encounters at the End of the World and My Winnipeg.


Also: Love Songs, Tropic Thunder, Ghost Town, Chop Shop, Doubt, Gran Torino, Burn After Reading, Waltz With Bashir, Frost/Nixon, Revolutionary Road, Slumdog Millionaire, My Blueberry Nights, Tell No One, Elegy, Transsiberian, Man on Wire, The Edge of Heaven, Momma's Man, Blindness, W., Frozen River, Standard Operating Procedure, Redbelt, The Promotion, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Shine a Light, and Married Life.


Worst: Hancock, The Rocker.

CIFF '08: A Christmas Tale

Like his previous film Kings and Queen, Arnaud Desplechin's A Christmas Tale (Un conte de Noël) is a fractured family drama, in this instance set around Christmas at the Vuillard house right after the family learns that the matriarch of the family, played by Catherine Deneuve, has been diagnosed with a degenerative type of cancer. The cancer can only be treated through injected bone marrow, and each member of the family is tested to see whether or not they match Deneuve's rare type, which brings them all together at their childhood home in the days leading up to Christmas. The sprawling family is largely made up of Desplechin regulars like Mathieu Almaric, as the Vuillard's troubled son, Emmanuelle Devos, as Almaric's lover, and Jean-Paul Roussillon, as the older husband of Deneuve. Desplechin divides the film into chapters, with title cards coming up with words like "reunion," and "farewell," but Desplechin's Christmas is hardly storybook-esque. As the film opens we learn that Almaric has been banished by his sister, played by Anne Consigny, after another in a serious of screw ups. Consigny's son just has just been discharged from a psych ward, after suffering a meltdown and coming at her with a knife. As such, the family dynamic is always based in some form of conflict. The numerous story and character threads are weaved by Desplechin in a mixture of film devices, from frequent irises in and out, to having the characters directly address the camera. With all of the family activity and emotional turbulence, Arnaud keeps Deneuve's wavering search for a marrow match as the through line of the film, and allows the rest to be as messy and untidy as life often is. What emerges from the confusion and film devices is the characters, bolstered by uniformly superb performances, including a strong turn from an increasingly reliable Chiara Mastroianni, Deneuve's real life daughter, playing the wife of one of Almaric's brothers, for whom another brother holds lingering romantic feelings. At the end of A Christmas Tale, we're left with an often funny, but ultimately sad story of a family moving in separate directions. It's due to the truth of the performances and great aplomb in the way in which Desplechin and co-writer Emmanuel Bourdieu' script unfolds that the story feels so organic to its characters. What makes the film so successful is that Desplechin and Bourdieu don't feel the need to tie up their Tale with a bow, but rather let its characters and various story threads remain messy and realistic, and that's the real gift.

CIFF '08: Synecdoche, New York

As a writer, Charlie Kaufman has always been interested in exploring large concepts in his work, from identity in Being John Malkovich, to memory in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and directors Spike Jonze (Malkovich, Adaptation) and Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine, Human Nature) have helped thread those ideas into what essentially end up being love stories. Directing his own screenplay for the first time in Synecdoche, New York, Kaufman has rid himself of the love story, and has this time thread his characters and plot around his ideas. In this case those ideas include theater, death, illness, death, gender, marriage, art, death, and the color of stool. Picking up a visual aesthetic that combines Jonze's and Gondry's, and a score from Eternal Sunshine's Jon Brion, Kaufman tells the story of a theater director played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, who, after receiving a genius grant from the MacCarther Foundation, attempts to stage an "honest," massive theater piece that "truly reflects who he is." Or maybe not. In a Q&A after the film, Kaufman said he attempted to write with dream logic, and though the film doesn't offer the pat conclusion that it was all a dream, it helps to explain the tone of the film and things that comprise Kaufman's mise en scene. One indicative example is Hoffman's assistant, played by Samantha Morton, who moves into a house that is constantly on fire, which her real estate agent explains drastically reduces the price. Other such oddities fill the film, but don't seem to be there just to be eccentric, but rather, as Kaufman said, exist to externally reflect the characters' state of mind. An abundance of characters play into the story, with a cast that includes Catherine Keener, Emily Watson, Tom Noonan, Michelle Williams, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Hope Davis, and Dianne Wiest. As with his previous films identity plays a large part, with characters playing one another in Hoffman's theater piece, and the line between real life and art are blurred, but the film never feels confusing. Nonetheless Synecdoche is a film that's almost impossible to explain after seeing it once, and unlike Malkovich, Adaptation, or Eternal Sunshine we're not offered any kind of traditional narrative conclusion, no strings are tied together, but it's as powerful a film I've seen in some time. A mad fever dream of a movie.

CIFF '08: Wendy and Lucy

It's not often you find a film that demands an audience to decipher the nature of its characters. So subtle is the film in the way it draws you into its main character Wendy, played by a mesmerizing Michelle Williams, who writer-director Kelly Reichardt advised to give up bathing and make-up, in a film that gets in deep to the rhythms of its characters' lives. As the film begins we find Wendy and her dog Lucy in Oregon en route to Alaska, where Wendy hopes to find work. A transportation problem temporarily strands Wendy and Lucy, and armed with a few hundred dollars they're forced to sleep in her car in Oregon. In a painful and believable development, Lucy goes missing, and the rest of the film follows Wendy in her search for Lucy and the trouble she encounters staying in Oregon. Like Reichardt's previous film Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy is not showy in any way. We get a real sense of life being lived on screen through the combination of the performances and Reichardt's understated, observational aesthetic. All of the information we receive about Wendy is indirect, as in a scene after Lucy goes missing, Wendy calls her sister in Indiana who, without prompting, mentions that she doesn't have any money to lend Wendy. One line and Reichardt and Jonathan Raymond's script tells us so much about Wendy's past, and her relationship with her sister. We can draw these few suppositions about Wendy from the film, but beyond that we're left to watch this woman and decipher her emotions and state of mind. The film's success is due in large part Michelle Williams, and in the years since her flirtation with teen stardom, she's had an eclectic career in non-commercial film. Working with Wim Wenders, Todd Haynes, Ang Lee, Tom McCarthy, and others, Williams has turned in performances with progressive depth and skill. So quiet she is in this film, so immersed in this character that you don't for a second question the authenticity of her performance or her circumstances. There's little I can say that can express the tone of the film or the lack of forcedness and plotting, other than to say that the performances are excellent, the photography is splendid, and the film is pitch perfect and among the best I've seen this year.

CIFF '08: The Wrestler

Darren Aronofsky is one of my favorite directors, and I've loved his last three films. This is a definite change of pace. Instead of his usual visual flourishes, he strips down his aesthetic, and simply follows the characters. Mickey Rourke is the movie, and through the almost Dardenne brothers like style, we get inside the mind of a man who can do one thing, do it great, but no longer has a place where can excell in that field, professional wrestling. Rourke has few friends, but he does have one person he seems to connect with, a stripper played by Marisa Tomei. As Rourke is sidelined for a time, he begins to try and reconnect with his daughter, played by Evan Rachel Wood, at the urging of Tomei. This isn't a film you need to go into with any predeliction towards pro Wrestling, you can even hate it, and I don't think that'd detract from what a great movie it is and how special the performances are. I like Mickey Rourke, and I like even more now that his face is a big hunk of battered flesh. Even in a cartoonish role like Marv in Sin City, Rourke brings a sadness to his characters, a kind of big lug with a lot of inner conflict, that you rarely see in men of his build in movies. Tomei and Wood are equally as good in their scenes, balancing out Rourke's tragic hero. The music, much like the wrestling attire, is often cheesy, but it so fits the world of these characters, and what they listen to and like that any other choice would diminish the realism that this film thrives in. A small, human drama that's distincly American, and yet approached from an angle more traditionally seen in European films, The Wrestler is a clear departure for Aronofsky, but one that's not out of line with his creativity or his talent. At the Q&A after the film Aronofsky mentioned that he thought of his first three films as a loose trilogy, building up to 2006's The Fountain, and that he hopes he can continue to reinvent himself and surprise his audience. With The Wrestler, Aronofsky surprises his audience a great deal, and delights them even more.

Nobody Played

So it seems the reaction to "Funny Games" has been...silence. The film's barely broken a million dollars (which is great for a Haneke film, but pretty poor considering it has a major star whose opened both "arthouse" and big horror films big before*), and is closing in most of the 250+ theatres it played in. Those who've seen it have said nothing (unless you count likely false accounts like this one). People like to be entertained, especially those in the horror crowd and the reaction in the theater I was in seemed like mostly indifference. I do wonder if it'd been pushed as hard as the films it condemns, or released in the number of theaters, would it have had any impact. If anything its taught me that a strong personal reaction is not a neccesary indication that others will give a shit.

Alright everybody, out of the theater.

*by comparison, Watts' last film "Eastern Promises opened at $547,092, playing in 15 theatres, and "Funny Games" opened to $3000 less, playing 286 theatres.

Not "Funny," Ha Ha

So I'm trying something new on this blog, actual film writing.

I've been following a discussion at Jim Emerson's "Scanners" blog for the past couple of days about Michael Haneke's new remake of his 1997 film "Funny Games."

The first part of the discussion can be found here, but what made me write the response below was Mr. Emerson's review of the film, linked to here. I'll update as the discussion continues, and post any responses I get, and possibly use this as a place to continue the discussion if it loses steam over there.




Spoilers and angry rebuttal ahead

I'm kind of flabbergasted by your analysis, and particularly your utterly ridiculous comparisons between the movie and the Abu Ghraib photographs.

It's funny, a month or so ago a documentary called "Taxi to the Dark Side" came out, and I saw it. Sitting in the theater, I was horrified, angry, disgusted, and I came out shaken. I didn't need the film. I'd read about what was happening to the detainees, but I saw it anyway. It added to my understanding of the situation, and though its a tough, gruelling watch, I was glad I saw it. I'd liken that to seeing the 1997 "Funny Games" in some ways. I think both are vital, important, very different, but brilliant films. Do I love them? No. Insomuch as its hard to love something you never want to see again. Does that make them any less vital? Or powerful? Or great? I don't think so. I didn't love the despair and confusion and anger and all of the emotions that come with seeing detainees being forced to strip and masturbate, piled on one another being beaten. I didn't love seeing the atrophied legs of a dead detainee. But these things are happening, and denying them helps nothing.

Maybe its a stretch, but in a way, the things in Haneke's self-consciously filmy FILM are happening too. They happen in the multiplexes every January, and October when scores of teenagers scream for blood and mutilation while munching on popcorn. I don't know if you've been in an audience whose shouted for blood, but it's like you've been transported back to the Coloseeum. I myself don't love watching people being tortured, but clearly people do. The reason I'd willingly go to something like "Taxi" or 'Funny Games" is because theirs a point to witnessing these acts, and it's not entertainment. The films do exist, and Haneke's statement isn't mixed or hypocritical at all. He made one of those "torture porn" films, and instead of leading it to its "normal" conclusion, he steps outside of the film and comments. When one of the torturers asks the audience if they're on the family's side, I don't think that's a condemnation of the audience on Haneke's part, its a legitimate question. The normal expectation for this kind of movie is that the family will be tortured for a while, one or two might get killed off, but eventually they'll get some kind of redemption, and probably kill the two boys.That way the audience gets the fun of torture with a tidy, unambiguous ending that superficially evens the moral keel. That doesn't happen in Haneke's film, and so it either makes the audience realize or acknowledge that deriving glee from the torture in those films makes you complicit.

Granted, it's much easier NOT to pay attention to the media coverage of Iraq and Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib, and its much easier to do as you suggest and NOT see "Funny Games" and think about what Haneke is expressing. I mean, how dare Haneke be so obnoxious as to mirror the torture trend and comment on it, right? How obnoxious of Alex Gibney for documenting actual torture, right? They gave an Oscar to that sadist? Right...

Do you have the same complaints with Gibney, Mr. Emerson? Or how about the makers of "The Bridge?" Or, if you think its unfair comparing Haneke to a documentarian, do you have the same problems with Gavin Hood for "Rendition?" Or Neil Marshall for keeping those poor women in the cave in "The Descent?" Why is it not okay for Haneke to have message take over his film rather than character or story, but it is okay for Gibney, or Charles Ferguson, or Michael Moore to? Is the overt falsity in Haneke's film what makes it so abhorrent? You can argue that Haneke could have made his point more eloquently, or maybe made a documentary, but the bluntness in the film is the same bluntness you find in "Cache," which you admire, and the rest of his work. "Cache" is certainly more entertaining, and most definitely a better, more complex film. It'd be a stretch to call "Funny Games" entertainment, but is that all film can be? You might not love it, but does it really only achieve half a stars worth of its goal?

And here I thought the "Contrarian Blog-a-than" had been over for months...