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The Way Back

February 16, 2013

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One of the most misunderstood and underrated films of the past couple of years has been The Way Back by Peter Weir. Before it came out, I remember reading an article lamenting how the Hollywood distribution landscape had changed so much over the previous decade that Weir — an Oscar nominated and widely admired filmmaker — could no longer get studio backing and distribution for his latest effort. Just seven years earlier, Twentieth Century Fox put its weight behind the production and distribution of Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), which went on to land 10 Academy Award nominations (including two for Weir). But, by the time of The Way Back, Weir’s financiers and distributors consisted of a network of fairly small companies geared for the art-house market. Not that the look and quality of The Way Back suffers, but it’s sad all the same because the absence of heavyweight companies with deep pockets as well as far-reaching distribution and marketing muscle could really have helped this ambitious and deserving film reach a wider audience. As it stands, Weir and his cinema — once A-list sure bets — risk becoming overshadowed by the studios’ desire to back only tentpole franchises engineered for maximum box office.

The Way Back follows a group of prison-camp escapees during WWII as they trek the thousands of miles from Siberia to safe asylum in British-occupied India. This is not an action or a suspense film, though Wier fashions elements of both into his tale. This is not a character study, particularly, since none of the characters — save that of Janusz, a political prisoner played by Jim Sturgess — really assumes fully rounded dimensions. There are two others, a cutthroat ex-criminal played by Colin Farrell and an enigmatic American played by Ed Harris who command our attention with their hard-edged personalities, their jaded world views. Gradually, through their cooperation and grit, we become fond of them, as we do the rest in the group because of their pure and enduring will to live. For the most part, The Way Back is a quiet and reflective experience in which its characters — and we, the audience — weigh constantly whether it isn’t better to just lie down and die. But always these men — and the one young Polish woman who joins them, played by Saoirse Ronan — push onwards, haggard, parched, famished, but driven toward life, escape, a more hopeful future.

Weir’s drama is decidedly low-key and exists largely as one between the individual and the passing landscape. The men distract themselves with conversations about chicken recipes as they subsist on tree bark, trudge on on swollen feet wrapped in rags, and dream of the next sip of water or a bit of real food. The Way Back is like a prison film and a prison escape film in one, because upon escaping the real prison, the group finds itself in another one, extending 4000 miles from end to end. They drop like flies as they go, one by one, their graves indicated by the markers like bread crumbs along the way. And there are surprising decisions too as, for instance, when Farrell’s character realizes that Mother Russia is the only home for him, for better or worse. His fate is a haunting one, visualized in the image of a lone man against the rugged, unforgiving starkness of his homeland, and we can’t help but wonder what lies ahead for him. Whether The Way Back is fiction or not isn’t really important (there are assertions that the story, despite its claim as being based-on-fact, is all fabrication). There are greater concerns in the film, especially the running desire for redemption that inspires Janusz. Even after his betrayal, the man isn’t angry at his wife, he understands the duress under which she had to give him up. His goal now is to tell her he forgives her. Harris’s story too is anchored by the guilt he feels towards his child.

Weir maintains a sure, subtle hand throughout. His one major story flaw is that he doesn’t allow for enough buildup at the prison camp before the men stage their breakout. There isn’t enough of a sense of last-straw desperation or, for that matter, any sense of coordinated planning, things that would’ve added suspense to the breakout once it did happen. As it is, the breakout comes abruptly, too soon, and seems too easy, amounting only to a bunch of men running wildly through the woods as dogs and soldiers pursue. They have only to run hard enough and long enough to secure their chance at survival. Still, in the passages that follow, Weir offers a solid, resonant meditation on survival, on hope, on the value of life in the face of implacable hostility, portrayed memorably by an excellent cast and Weir’s vast, brutal, awe-inspiring landscapes.

Grade: B+

Directed by: Peter Weir
Written by: Keith R. Clarke, Peter Weir
Cast: Jim Sturgess, Ed Harris, Saoirse Ronan, Mark Strong, Colin Farrell

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Silver Linings Playbook

December 7, 2012

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You have to hand it to David O. Russell. Since his debut feature, Spanking the Monkey in 1994, he has steadily proven himself to be a worthy descendent of Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder. More than any other Hollywood filmmaker, Russell has demonstrated a facility with nutty situations, screwball energy, and eccentric characters, the kind of facility that recalls Sturges in his Hail the Conquering Hero and Miracle of Morgan’s Creek heyday, the kind that approximates the manic farce of Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot together with the acerbic wit and sentiment of The Apartment. Movies like Flirting with Disaster (my vote for Russell’s best movie), I Heart Huckabees, and his latest, Silver Linings Playbook all have the pace and hysterics to match Hollywood’s screwball tradition and no other filmmaker seems capable of sustaining a sense of sheer lunacy–that is, an edgy, barely contained craziness–over a feature-length movie without losing his audience. Yet, as entertainingly oddball as Playbook is, the movie derives much of its pleasure from its offbeat energy, soft-heartedness, and the roiling tensions that preoccupy its largely two-dimensional characters.

Insanity, or at least some degree of it, is all over this movie. Bradley Cooper stars as Pat Solatano, just released from a mental institution after a violent episode that’s scared off his wife. He moves back in with his parents, played by Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver, vows to clean up his act, and win back the affections of his estranged wife, Nikki (Brea Bee), who’s taken out a restraining order on him. Of course, Pat functions in a kind of manic delusional state, just as his father–as warm and genuine as he is in his love for Pat–is an obsessive-compulsive Eagles football fan whose life pivots on the outcomes of football Sundays. Because he can’t get to Nikki, Pat enlists the aid, however grudgingly, of Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), one of her friends. Tiffany herself has more than her share of emotional issues; she’s struggling to put the grief and guilt over her husband’s death behind her. So she pours her energies into a dance competition and makes a deal with Pat: if he agrees to be her dance partner in the competition, she’ll cooperate in his attempts to win back his wife. Pat and Tiffany’s uneasy alliance warms to a mutually dependent friendship that, after some ups and downs, blossoms into, you guessed it, an old-time romance.

Five years ago, Mark Wahlberg–an actor who’s been featured in three of Russell’s movies–would have played Pat; the role of the off-kilter yet adorably sweet working-class misfit seems tailor-made for an earlier Wahlberg incarnation. Cooper gamely fills Wahlberg’s shoes here; his comic timing and intensity level matches that of his predecessor. And, as the volatile Tiffany, Lawrence is consistently watchable. De Niro and Weever nicely counterpoint each other with the latter serving as a kind of buffer for the neurotic excesses of the former. But, when all’s said and done, Silver Linings Playbook is as aggressively offbeat as it is aggressively by-the-numbers. This is a tried-and-true, paint-by-numbers rom-com whose adherence to convention is masked by Russell’s brand of anarchic comedy. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl, so the story goes–what’s different this time around are the players and the twists in the path that lead us to the end. Russell doesn’t really offer a new take on family or interpersonal dynamics and we never feel that Pat, Tiffany, or anyone else here are particularly authentic human beings, just a collection of tics, oddities, and obsessions. But, for what it’s worth, Silver Linings Playbook is grounded in real heart–an embrace of such eternal virtues as true love, parent-child bonding, and self realization–and it delivers the kind of sharply timed laughs that Sturges and Wilder would’ve appreciated.

Grade: B-

Directed by: David O. Russell
Written by: David O. Russell
Cast: Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Jacki Weaver, Chris Tucker, Anupam Ker, John Ortiz, Julia Stiles, Brea Bee

Posted in All Reviews Archive, Comedy, Drama, Romance | Leave a Comment »

Lincoln

November 24, 2012

There are three possible responses you might have to Lincoln, the long-in-development biopic from Steven Spielberg. You might instantly love the film, case closed. Or you might find it so shatteringly dull that you never want to come near it again. Or you might have a delayed response, a complicated mixture of the first two responses, one that admires the film but isn’t so taken with its inherent stodginess. I proclaim that I’m in that third category of audience member — within the first 15 minutes of Lincoln, I couldn’t believe how bored I was but, by the end, I knew I loved (and was fascinated by) enough of Lincoln to want to take another look (and another) down the road.

Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner take as their dramatic impetus Lincoln’s intense (and ultimately successful) efforts to get the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery, passed in the House of Representatives. Against the politicking and agitation pro and against the bill, the Civil War rages — another great weight on Lincoln’s shoulders. What’s more, Lincoln’s family life and relationship with his wife, Mary (Sally Field), are pained and haunted by the recent death of a child. The tragedy has driven Mary closer to a nervous breakdown and Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis) must maintain a facade of strength — a kind of tough love — whenever Mary’s mental state begins to crumble.

The first impression that hits you about Kushner’s screenplay is how just how talky it is. We don’t come upon movies this talky anymore. Lincoln is supremely talky, almost to the exclusion of all other qualities. Scene after scene is rooted in dialogue — mostly dialogue among politicians, Lincoln among them, cajoling, bribing, and browbeating others into supporting the passage of the bill. When word arrives that the South may be ready to surrender, the news throws the chance of the bill passing into jeopardy — after all, would Americans care any longer about freeing slaves if the war over slavery is brought to an end? Thus, Kushner and Spielberg arrive at an effective race-against-the-clock device as Lincoln’s convictions about the moral imperative of the Thirteen Amendment are tested.

Apart from seeing the great moral crusade of American history devolve (by necessity) into a battle between Lincoln’s shrewd Machiavellian plotting — he hires lobbyists to bribe functionaries with sought-after posts in the administration in return for their votes — and the fire-and-brimstone fearmongering of anti-abolitionists in Congress, Lincoln offers a tender and heartbreaking look at the dynamics within the President’s family. As Mary seeks to shield her older son Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) from enlistment, we feel his anguish, his determination to join the Union effort not only to be of service to the country but to honor his pride and his manhood. We feel too Lincoln’s inner battle between his reluctance to endanger Robert (especially after suffering the death of another child) and his duty to let his son be his own man. Gordon-Levitt and Day-Lewis’s scenes together prove Spielberg’s keenness for depicting father-son relationships — something he’s shown mastery with throughout his career. Even more powerful are those moments — however fleeting they are — between Lincoln and his younger son Tad (Gulliver McGrath); we sense the bond that father feels for his son in every interaction they have. Tad adores his father and Lincoln is an infinitely loving and patient father. Spielberg shows us as much when, in one scene, Lincoln — weary from another’s day fight — finds Tad sleeping on the floor with this toys scattered before him. Lincoln lies down next to Tad, strokes his hair, and kisses him — actions which seem so organic, so unforced and natural as could only occur in those spontaneous moments between parent and child. Then Tad wakes — and without saying a word — climbs onto his father’s back before Lincoln stands and carries his son, piggy-backed, to bed. There’s another breathtaking moment, conveyed entirely though imagery and behavior, when Lincoln hears the pealing of bells outside his office — signaling his hard-fought Congressional victory. Father and son walk to the window. Spielberg’s camera views them through the curtain, blanched in heavenly daylight, as Lincoln holds his son and absorbs the moment’s exultation. It’s a moment of deep, thoughtful silence and extraordinary poignance, captured by a filmmaker working in peak form.

There is directorial mastery here, and, even for those like me for whom the power of Lincoln is a percolating realization, one thing is certain: The performance by Daniel Day-Lewis is astonishing. It is an uncanny, almost atavistic accomplishment of one man channeling the spirit of another and bringing him to life on-screen. Enough has been said in praise of Day-Lewis, both for his performance in Lincoln and his career as a whole, so I won’t delve much into it. Please note that the performance is nothing short of miraculous, the result of the actor’s (and the director’s) willingness to take major artistic leaps and span the chasm of time and between two souls, one invoking the deceased spirit of the other. Supporting performances from Tommy Lee Jones as fiery abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens, David Strathairn as Secretary of State William Seward, and James Spader as cunning lobbyist W.N. Bilbo stand out in a solid cast.

Lincoln is, in many ways, Spielberg’s boldest and most committed picture. It is absent of the director’s visual showmanship as well as, thankfully, his propensity for drippy sentiment (something that’s marred otherwise solid Spielberg efforts). This is a straightforward, sharply written telling of one man and one nation facing their toughest crucible, workmanlike yet reverential. As a portrait of political acumen, moral resolve, and leadership (both within a family and as a President), Lincoln magnificently makes the case that the man it depicts more than deserves the iconic status that history and affection have afforded him.

Grade: A-

Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Written by: Tony Kushner
Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, David Strathairn, Tommy Lee Jones, Sally Field, James Spader, John Hawkes, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tim Blake Nelson, Jackie Earle Haley, Bruce McGill

Posted in Best of 2012, Drama | 1 Comment »

Flight

November 15, 2012

The first 40 minutes of Flight feature perhaps the boldest filmmaking in the career of director Robert Zemeckis. Not only does it further prove his mastery of suspense, his complete command over the physical elements of action, but we find him pushing his characters to the brink of emotional disaster, far-gone into abusive behavior, and he keeps them there, teetering on the precipice between salvation and certain doom. The fact that we care as much as we do about his protagonist, an alcoholic commercial airline pilot named Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington), means that his struggle to face his demons becomes every bit as harrowing an experience as enduring the terror-filled mid-air incident that triggers the entire narrative. After the dust from that expertly directed opening episode settles, though, Flight becomes an awfully familiar melodrama redeemed thankfully by a bracing performance by the world-class Washington.

Whitaker is a powerhouse drunk, the kind of drunk who chugs gallons of vodka like it’s water while behind the wheel. And he’ll snort a few lines to bounce back out of his stupor. When we find him taking the cockpit of his fully loaded plane, Whitaker is coming off a bruising drug and booze-fueled bender. But what should’ve been a short hop from Florida to Georgia ends up being a descent into Hell as Whittaker’s plane loses hydraulics and nosedives. In the ensuing vortex of panic and confusion, Whittaker miraculously lands the plane, saving most of the lives on-board. This entire sequence is worth the price of admission and should be filed among the movies’ greatest air disasters.

What should be a cause for celebration for Whitaker is the beginning of a nightmare as evidence of his blood-alcohol content soon comes to light. And the lawyer representing the pilot’s union (Don Cheedle), along with the union rep (Bruce Greenwood), struggle to keep Whittaker on the straight-and-narrow as they seek to deflect liability away from his drunkenness in preparation for an upcoming NTSB hearing. Hounded by shame, guilt, and anger, however, Whittaker can’t stay away from the bottle. The alcohol is both the source all his anguish — he feels he’s betrayed and abandoned his son and ex-wife due to his drinking — and his only comfort. The comfort, of course, is only an illusion, and it’s that journey towards dispelling the illusion and towards openly admitting (and repenting) his alcoholism that Zemeckis’s movie explores.

Anyone familiar with movie-of-the-week tropes about alcoholism knows the scenes: The drinking binges followed by chastened periods of going clean followed by guilt-fueled relapses followed by the protagonist reluctantly attending AA meetings and so on and so forth until the moment of truth, the moment of utter humility when the alcoholic sees the light. And, yes, we have a fellow traveler on Whittaker’s path too — a heroin addict, Nicole (Kelly Reilly), who’s farther along on the path than Whittaker and who tries to stand him up when he’s down. Anyone who’s seen Days of Wine and Roses (1962), and countless similar dramas, knows their fairly worn-out dynamic.

A shame about Flight is that what’s truly a spectacular (in every sense of the word) first act serves merely as a pretext to a far less interesting and cliche-ridden story about one man’s struggle to find himself. This isn’t to say that the movie isn’t compelling and absorbing: Washington is so wrenching, so heartbreaking — the kind of performance that’s both repulsive and appealing at once — that we forgive most of screenwriter John Gatins and Zemeckis’s lingerings in the familiar. There are some grievous errors that almost sink the whole movie as when John Goodman, playing Whitaker’s Dr. Feelgood, shows up at a critical point and throws the tone of the entire film out of whack. For the duration of his appearance and purpose in the scene, Flight goes from a deadly serious personal drama to some kind of perverse spring-break comedy. How Zemeckis could have miscalculated the nature and tone of his own drama, as evidenced by this scene, is baffling, and it points to a certain disconnect with the material as if he were out of his depth, and he needed to swim to the shallows to liven things up.

The performances are top-drawer across the board, especially Washington’s. He’s an actor supremely adept at playing men puffed up by a misguided sense of themselves only to be humbled by circumstance and deep introspection. Reilly is sweet and committed in a performance that’s largely redundant, while Greenwood and Cheedle hold up the sober end of the ensemble solidly. After Cast Away (2000), Flight is exactly the kind of product you’d by now expect from Zemeckis: Brilliantly crafted and loaded with high-end potential at the outset but which quickly falls into a rather pedestrian tour of monumental themes. As A-list substance-abuse melodramas go, this one lands safely enough.

Grade: B-

Directed by: Robert Zemeckis
Written by: John Gatins
Starring: Denzel Washington, Bruce Greenwood, Don Cheedle, Nadine Valazquez, Kelly Reilly, John Goodman

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Argo

October 30, 2012

Ben Affleck stars in and directs Argo, a tense, absorbing true-life espionage yarn about a CIA operative who embarks on a daring, borderline foolhardy, mission to extract six members of the American embassy in Tehran during the most heated days of the 1980 Iran hostage crisis. Facing a diplomatic stalemate and smoldering anti-American sentiment among Iran’s Islamic hardliners, the State Department finds itself with no options as it tries to orchestrate a plan to lift the American men and women who fled the embassy just as the protestors were storming the building and who are now holed up at the residence of the Canadian ambassador (Victor Garber). Affleck plays agent Tony Mendez who comes up with a scheme to cobble together a fake Hollywood production company readying to start production on a fake science-fiction movie set in the exotic Middle East. With the help of a pair of hard-nosed Hollywood old-timers, played by John Goodman and Alan Arkin, Mendez manages to create a convincing enough facade. Undercover as a Hollywood producer, Mendez sneaks himself into Tehran and manages to persuade the six hideaways into posing as his film crew in Tehran on a location scout and attempting a risky exit across the city and through Tehran’s airport — a minefield of suspicious government hardliners on the lookout for the fugitive Americans — and out of Iran.

From the retro Warner Bros. logo that appears at the beginning, riddled with faux scratch marks and film grain, to the camerawork, screenplay and editing, Argo is an uncanny evocation of the best political thrillers of the 1970s. It was Affleck’s intention to recall the works of Alan J. Pakula, particularly All the President’s Men, and he succeeds brilliantly. Much to his credit, Affleck manages to fashion a Pakula-esque vibe and style without tipping over into the no-man’s-land of indulgent homage; Argo is in itself a riveting and fascinating drama, not only for its genuinely tense spy-game elements, but the very real fears, doubts, loyalties, and bonds among this tight-knit group of escapees that get tested as Mendez hatches his escape plan. The acting across the board is crackling in the grand 1970′s tradition, with Affleck effectively channeling Pacino, Redford or Hoffman, while Bryan Cranston plays Mendez’s superior with an intensity and moral certitude that would make Jack Lemmon or Jason Robards proud. Argo is among the worthiest spy thrillers to come out of Hollywood in years, and it puts to rest (at least for this reviewer) any doubts over Affleck’s chops as a smart, shrewd director of consistently topnotch fare. Not only is the movie one of the year’s best, it could also usher Affleck into the short list of directors to watch (and root for) this awards season.

Grade: A-

Directed by: Ben Affleck
Written by: Chris Terrio
Cast: Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin, John Goodman, Victor Garber, Tate Donovan, Clean Duvall, Scoot McNairy, Rory Cochrane

Posted in Best of 2012, Drama, Genres, Thriller | Leave a Comment »

Trishna

August 18, 2012

For more than twenty years, Michael Winterbottom has kept up a restless pace, directing almost a movie a year. So he can’t be faulted for being lazy or blocked. And there’s always thoughtfulness, a sense of purpose at the core of everything he’s attempted. But, perhaps as a symptom of his assembly-line approach to his filmmaking, Winterbottom’s track record is, by and large, pretty mixed. For every In this World and A Mighty Heart, he’s churned out half-baked product like Code 46, 9 Songs and his latest, TrishnaWinterbottom’s adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Ubervilles. Read the full review

Posted in Drama, Foreign, Romance | Leave a Comment »

The Stranger (aka Agantuk)

January 27, 2012

When Satyajit Ray died in 1992, we lost among the last of a certain breed of artist: the socially conscious classicist. Ray was influenced in equal parts by the Western artistic tradition and by the Bengal Renaissance of the late 19th-early 20th centuries, perfectly realized in the literature of Rabindranath Tagore. In Ray’s cinema, we find compositions at once present and detached, functional yet poetic, serving a masterful formalism absorbed from Renoir and De Sica, Ray’s cinematic mentors. Within that framework jostle themes of survival amidst loneliness, the status of women, the decadence of the rich, old-world hypocrisy and new-world corruption, all of which rattled the Bengali status quo. Like Tagore’s sensuous riverscapes, Ray’s worlds — from the downtrodden huts and tenements of the Apu Trilogy to the ornate drawing-rooms of Jalsaghar and Charulata — thrive with detail. His cinema trains us to pay attention to set design, body language, gesture, the words left unsaid, all the while guiding us with the telling close-up, the insinuating tracking shot, the long take, the play of light and shadow.

“The Stranger” was Ray’s last film. I would not place it among his greatest, nor is it a film I would choose to introduce Ray to those unfamiliar with his cinema. But as the filmmaker’s final statement, a slap in the face of an entire social class — one that Ray devoted several pictures to criticizing — it’s as direct and as graceful as they get. Here is one satirical comedy that speaks its mind and doesn’t have to feel ashamed about itself in the morning.

On the surface, “The Stranger” is about trust and identity, as the well-off Bose family of Calcutta is paid a visit by a man who calls himself Mitra (Utpal Dutt) and who claims to be the wife’s long-lost uncle. Explaining his 35-year absence to his niece Anila (Mamata Shankar), Mitra recalls how, as an arts student in the mid-50′s, he chanced upon a picture of the Altamira cave paintings — primitive stone-age art that, he knew instantly, could never be rivaled for its authenticity, its immediacy. “After Altamira,” Picasso declared, “all is decadence,” and, after journeying all over the West, Mitra would surely agree. Having roamed the “civilized” quarters of Europe and America, Mitra explains how he grew bitter with the West’s obsession with technology (and nuclear one-upmanship), while its sickest and poorest continued to suffer. He turned to living with Native Americans and South American tribes. Civilization is just a cover, a word behind which all manner of evils and hypocrisies exist. “Savage” cultures, on the other hand, may not be perfect, but at least they are honest about themselves and co-exist peacefully with their environment.

Mitra’s presence in the Bose household triggers suspicions over his motives. While Anila bids to authenticate Mitra’s identity, humoring him with conversation and Bengali hospitality, her husband Sudhindra (Deepanker De) stashes away the family’s art pieces, and snoops out whether the self-proclaimed uncle’s sudden appearance has anything to do with a decades-old unclaimed inheritance. The only member of the family most open to believing Mitra and believing in him is the Boses’ young son, Satyaji (Bikram Bannerjee) — still innocent of social wiles.

Gradually, Ray uses Mitra’s presence to get at something deeper and more insidious, namely, that tendency in our “civilized” natures to judge self-righteously any culture we consider inferior or “savage.” The idea is first treated comically as Ranjan (Rabi Ghosh), a buffoonish actor, turns up and tries to suss out the visitor. His bungling efforts only show him up for what he is: a gossip-monger, a purveyor of lowbrow and scandal, something that Mitra has tried to escape from his whole life. Later on, a tragic version of that scene unfolds, this time as a mock cross-examination in which Prithwish (Dhritiman Chatterjee), a pompous lawyer, grills Mitra about his history and tries to shame him for his affinity with “barbaric” peoples. His efforts, morally anyway, have the exact opposite effect. For all his Enlightenment rationale, Prithwish’s bourgeois values, rife with double-standards and quick-to-condemn arrogance, makes him exactly the sort of “civilized” personality Ray is railing against throughout “The Stranger.” It’s during this sequence that we begin to sense that Mitra is, to a great extent, a stand-in for Ray himself, eager now in the twilight of life to sound off against the bourgeois smugness festering in his own culture. Indeed, we find Ray’s doppelgangers in both Mitra and the innocent Satyaji (a name not far removed from Satyajit) — characters who’ve either yet to be corrupted by “civilization” or who have successfully withstood its effects.

Mitra is not permanently estranged, though; there is hope at home, evidenced by Anila and Sudhindra’s final gestures to shed their urbane trappings. Their attempt to reconcile may be but a slight concession to our “wild side,” but it speaks volumes in Ray’s subtle vocabulary. In terms of its pacing and subtlety of style, “The Stranger” is arguably among Ray’s least accessible works. Those familiar with his cinema, though, will know where to look to find rewards — we find it in the cavernous corridors, stairways and antiques of the Bose household, bespeaking bourgeois indolence; in the sequence of carefully timed close-ups as the camera roves between faces masked in half-light; we find it in the extraordinary sequence in which Anila tries to impress Mitra with her sumptuous lunch of mutton, fish, lentils and Bengali “fancy crisps” — items that amuse more than awe the worldly and modest Mitra. With Ray, we’re guaranteed standout performances — whether farcical or dramatic — and The Stranger is no exception. Dutt, as the wise, gently acerbic Mitra is the film’s eloquent center of gravity, while De, Ghosh and Chatterjee are all pitch-perfect, variously flummoxed, bumbling or self-consciously stern. “The Stranger” cannot boast the lyrical energy of Ray’s 1955-1975 period; it’s the product of an artist whose temperament (and health) had since mellowed. It is, however, a beautiful valediction by a great filmmaker anticipating his own departure, whose message is as profound as any in a majestic career.

Grade: A-

Written/Directed by: Satyajit Ray
Cast: Dipankar Dey, Mamata Shankar, Bikram Bhattacharya, Utpal Dutt, Robi Ghosh, Promode Ganguly

Posted in All Reviews Archive, Drama, Foreign, Genres | 2 Comments »

The Motorcycle Diaries

January 24, 2012

Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles’s “The Motorcycle Diaries” is about the eight adventurous months that Ernesto “Che” Guevara and his lifelong friend, Alberto Granado, spent traversing South America in 1952. Adapted by playwright José Rivera from both Guevara and Granado’s memoirs, the movie charts their journey and, as it does, tries to use its awe-inspiring physicality to mirror young Guevara’s inner political awakening. That the movie is about one of today’s most revered revolutionary icons proves to be both its saving grace as well as its unmanageable burden, owing to its script’s inherent weaknesses.

Salles starts his story off in Buenos Aires as Guevara (Gael García Bernal), a bright-eyed 23-year-old medical student, bids goodbye to his family and climbs onto a ramshackle motorbike with Granado (Rodrigo de la Serna), a 29-year-old biochemist. Both are giddy with wanderlust, hungry for experience. Being free-spirited idealists, the young doctors make for a leper colony in the Amazon where they wish to volunteer their services. Along the way, the horny Granado cavorts with local girls, Guevara nurses his aching love for the daughter of an aristocratic landowner, but, most of all, they observe, with horror, the social injustice and poverty that pervades their continent.

Sadly, “Diaries” does little to vindicate the legacy of Guevara, who, since his death, has largely become an abstraction, a pop commodity. As an examination of the forces that shape a man’s destiny, the movie is unconvincing. Rivera’s coming-of-age script takes on a by-the-numbers feel which Salles handles with gracelessly staccato-like pacing, if only to race over the movie’s insubstantial surfaces. As a result, we know too little about the sensitive young Guevara at the movie’s outset, apart from his privileged family life, to truly feel for what he becomes—and what he’s on his way to becoming—at the movie’s end. Remove the ennobling specter of Guevara from “Diaries,” and you can hear its script’s creaky legs giving way.

What does prop the movie up are its intimate moments, those in which Guevara converses with the poor with the urgency of a social worker. Here, Salles adopts a documentary-like virtuosity, a wonderfully employed device, especially as Salles contrasts it with the more epic grandeur of “Diaries’” open spaces. Indeed, as the adventurers wend their way through South America’s richly varied terrain, the movie becomes a soul-stirring paean to the continent’s beauty. Cinematographer Eric Gautier and Production Designer Carlos Conti masterfully evoke the textures and colors of early ’50s Latin American culture, creating images that move to the indigenous rhythms of Gustavo Santaolalla’s lively music. Garcia Bernal and de la Serna offer heartfelt, charismatic performances which, combined with Salles’s poetry of majestic landscapes and poverty-worn faces, give “Diaries” its simple, enduring appeal.

Grade: B

Directed by: Walter Salles
Written by: Jose Rivera
Cast: Gael García Bernal, Rodrigo De la Serna, Mercedes Morán, Jean Pierre Noher, Lucas Oro

Posted in All Reviews Archive, Drama, Genres, Historical | Leave a Comment »

Monster

January 24, 2012

With her performance in “Monster,” Charlize Theron charges down the gates that have confined her to typecasting limbo and sets a new standard by which to measure her future work. In Patty Jenkins’ writing-directing debut, Theron plays Aileen Wuornos, the Florida prostitute who killed six men in the ’80s before she was caught and, in 2002, executed.

“Monster,” at heart, is not a slasher movie but a tortured love story between Wuornos and her teenage girlfriend, Selby Wall (Christina Ricci). Their relationship is a refuge from the despair in their separate lives: Wuornos’ lifelong degradation at the hands of men draws her to the affections of a female partner; Shelby, a lesbian, clings to Wuornos because she allows her the financial and sexual escape from the conservative stranglehold of her family.

The manipulative and desperate nature of their relationship is what kicks “Monster’s” narrative into gear. To ensure their cash flow, Selby cajoles the reluctant Wuornos into continuing to ply her trade. One night, in a fit of rage, Wuornos shoots the man who has just tortured and raped her. The trauma of this event takes her already dubious attitude to men into the realm of full-blown murderous hate.

Jenkins’ direction is assured throughout, but her opening scenes are the most powerful, depicting that sad, provincial America of trailer parks and roller rinks—that trashy, seedy outpost of frizzy hair and Journey ballads by which we are just as fascinated as depressed. As it goes, “Monster” gets increasingly bogged down in its more literal-minded melodrama, as Wuornos kills and steals, and the couple tries frantically to dodge the law. Jenkins’ ethereal early scenes are trampled over by hardworking but labored episodes of escalating tensions.

Between the two leads, Theron handily dominates. With the help of some weight gain and Tony G.’s masterful make-up effects, Theron’s transformation, down to her cocky strut and countrified twang, is startling. More than that is how confidently and naturally Theron humanizes a woman long-branded in the media as a monster. For her part, Ricci cannot reconcile Selby, the dreamy-eyed adolescent with Selby, the manipulative black widow, into a cohesive characterization. As a result, she stumbles along to Theron’s beat. Adding his salty, flint-eyed presence to the mix is Bruce Dern who graces the movie briefly as Thomas, Wuornos’ trusty father-figure.

“Monster” is a workhorse of a character study. Its plodding, sporadically effective script may not entice much, but it finds a haunting eloquence thanks to Theron’s lacerating, career-defining performance.

Grade: B

Written/Directed by: Patty Jenkins
Cast: Charlize Theron, Christina Ricci, Bruce Dern, Lee Tergesen, Annie Corley

Posted in All Reviews Archive, Drama, Genres, Romance | Leave a Comment »

Intermission

January 24, 2012

Dizzily paced and structured, the Irish import “Intermission” charms with its “never-let-‘em-see-you-sweat” exuberance. Theater denizens, Mark O’Rowe and John Crowley, the movie’s writer and director respectively, juggle elements of romantic comedy and farcical crime caper with hardly a misstep or stumble. After a somewhat annoyingly “virtuosic” opening that comes staggering at us with a chopped-up, documentary-style jitteriness, “Intermission” finds a sure and brisk footing. Before long, you’re swept away in its pell-mell of interweaving narratives by a couple of crack storytellers who seem audaciously at ease in their newfound medium.

Dewy-eyed and pouty-lipped John (Cillian Murphy) calls it off with his girlfriend, Dierdre (Kelly Macdonald), and almost immediately regrets it. He finds that it’s too late to make amends, however, because Dierdre is already bedding down with Sam, a middle-aged and married bank manager in the thick of a raging mid-life crisis. Eager to mend her tattered self-esteem, Sam’s jilted wife, Noeleen (Dierdre O’Kane) sets her sights on Oscar (David Wilmot), John’s rangy, sex-starved pal. Noeleen’s unleashed libido, not to mention her pent-up rage at her delinquent husband, loosens Oscar’s goose but it also, comically and mid-coitally, beats the poor schlub to a pulp.

John and Noeleen aren’t the only ones stung by rejection. Ever since her last boyfriend shit on her, literally, Dierdre’s sister, Sally (Shirley Henderson), has let herself go and has the moustache to prove it. Sally’s bitterness has her hissing and snarling, but she’s got a tender soul which her widowed mother (Ger Ryan) tries patiently to nurse back to health.

Following the old rule that if you can’t get them back, then get back at them, John throws in with Lehiff, a petty, thuggish punk (played with gusto by Colin Farrell) in a scheme to kidnap Dierdre and hold her ransom to Sam. It so happens that Lehiff is in the cross-hairs of the brutish Jerry Lynch (the indomitable Colm Meaney), Dublin’s answer to Popeye Doyle by way of the self-serious vanity of Inspector Clouseau. Lynch is on a one-man crusade to scour Dublin’s streets of scum and achieve local stardom, while he’s at it, if a reality-TV producer has his way. Meaney mines the great tradition of comic blowhards; he clads Lynch in the armor of male bravado, but one that can’t hide his pathetic inner gloom nor his idiosyncrasies (in this case, an obsession with Celtic mysticism).

Through all its whirl and bluster, “Intermission” comes through a remarkably winning and tender character study—a patchwork of contemporary Dublin’s lovers, hoods and regular Joe’s. O’Rowe and Crowley impressively dovetail their various stories through well-timed turns, parallels and intersections. Add to its ambitious script and direction an ensemble of on-target performances, and you have a rare seasonal treat: a rowdy comedy unafraid of honesty and with a direct appeal to the heart.

Grade: A-

Directed by: John Crowley
Written by: Mark O’Rowe
Cast: Colin Farrell, Cillian Murphy, Kelly Macdonald, Brian F. O’Bryne, Colm Meaney

Posted in All Reviews Archive, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Genres, Romance | Leave a Comment »

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