Friday, January 2, 2009
Movies: Waltz With Bashir
With the aesthetic fluency of Grand Theft Auto, the moral nuance of a kindergarten classroom, and the psychological profundity of the Batman comics, this film offers nothing compelling for an audience that’s graduated from high school, though it is being marketed as a political documentary for educated adults. The plot (whether or not a documentary should have plot is a separate issue; this film has one, though it’s rather weak) centers around the filmmaker’s search for an accurate description of his participation in the Beirut massacre when he served in the Israeli army more than twenty years ago. He travels the globe, interviewing old comrades about their memories, hoping someone will remember what role he played. Ultimately, his memory becomes a composite of all the other memories he hears. At the end of the film, to render this guilt-fueled drivel relevant, we are shown actual footage of the scene of the massacre. Theoretically, after 90 minutes of animation, the sight of actual corpses, stacked and bloodied, and the anguished faces of ululating women are to move us. In fact, this low-resolution video of collateral damage, so inferior to depictions of violence we see at the movies every day, doesn’t even permeate our boredom, much less access some kind of political empathy or moral outrage. This is not because we are desensitized; this is because Waltz With Bashir is a terribly-made film.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Movies: Gran Torino
I was certain that this movie was going to suck. I laughed so hard during the trailer that I gave myself a stomach-ache. What could be more preposterous than Clint Eastwood in his traditional vigilante role, only this time pulling guns (or just pointed fingers) at a rainbow coalition of teenaged gangstas?
Turns out Clint has a better sense of irony than I thought. At long last, a screenplay (courtesy Nick Schenk) that, for all its racist epithets (which is all anyone seems able to talk about), flows, feels real. Eastwood plays a Korean War vet, freshly widowered, with two spoiled sons, a sprinkling of spoiled grandchildren, and a mint-condition Gran Torino that he helped build when he worked at the Ford plant. He keeps his home, his car, and his guns ship-shape, with no company but an all-American yellow lab and a cooler full of (unironic) PBR cans. He's also the last white man in the neighborhood.
This man becomes an unintentional hero simply by protecting his own lawn at gunpoint; the next morning, his stairs are covered with gifts from the Asian families of the neighborhood. The plucky girl next door, Sue, forces a friendship, enabling the widower vet to also become mentor to her shy and aimless brother Thao. Clint and his guns save Thao from his gangster cousins, then Sue from a trio of black thugs, salivating after quickly dispatching her white wanna-be thug wanna-be boyfriend (this is probably the film's best scene: honest, wry, terribly funny, and even a bit scary).
What he can't save them from is retaliation; not only does their house get shot up, but Thao's face gets burnt with a cigarette, and Sue gets beaten and raped (yes, by her own so-called family). Of course, Clint goes into vigilante mode, but instead of bringing a gun, the man with little left to live for brings only his life, and when he gets shot full of bullets (landing in a none-too-subtle Christ-posture, arms akimbo), all the Asian gangsters get sent to prison, an ending not satisfying for all, but plenty satisfying for me. Thao, of course, inherits the Gran Torino, much to the spoilt granddaughter's dismay.
So maybe there's nothing ironic about the ending; I've actually heard the film called certain variations of cloying, saccharine, sentimental, and improbable. But after a season of cloying, saccharine, sentimental, and improbably films, Gran Torino really does feel refreshing, unflinching. And I don't think it's simply because we're so culturally hypersensitive these days that a slew of sordid soubriquets makes a big bang. I think it's because Eastwood has made about a gazillion movies and by now knows exactly what he's doing.
Turns out Clint has a better sense of irony than I thought. At long last, a screenplay (courtesy Nick Schenk) that, for all its racist epithets (which is all anyone seems able to talk about), flows, feels real. Eastwood plays a Korean War vet, freshly widowered, with two spoiled sons, a sprinkling of spoiled grandchildren, and a mint-condition Gran Torino that he helped build when he worked at the Ford plant. He keeps his home, his car, and his guns ship-shape, with no company but an all-American yellow lab and a cooler full of (unironic) PBR cans. He's also the last white man in the neighborhood.
This man becomes an unintentional hero simply by protecting his own lawn at gunpoint; the next morning, his stairs are covered with gifts from the Asian families of the neighborhood. The plucky girl next door, Sue, forces a friendship, enabling the widower vet to also become mentor to her shy and aimless brother Thao. Clint and his guns save Thao from his gangster cousins, then Sue from a trio of black thugs, salivating after quickly dispatching her white wanna-be thug wanna-be boyfriend (this is probably the film's best scene: honest, wry, terribly funny, and even a bit scary).
What he can't save them from is retaliation; not only does their house get shot up, but Thao's face gets burnt with a cigarette, and Sue gets beaten and raped (yes, by her own so-called family). Of course, Clint goes into vigilante mode, but instead of bringing a gun, the man with little left to live for brings only his life, and when he gets shot full of bullets (landing in a none-too-subtle Christ-posture, arms akimbo), all the Asian gangsters get sent to prison, an ending not satisfying for all, but plenty satisfying for me. Thao, of course, inherits the Gran Torino, much to the spoilt granddaughter's dismay.
So maybe there's nothing ironic about the ending; I've actually heard the film called certain variations of cloying, saccharine, sentimental, and improbable. But after a season of cloying, saccharine, sentimental, and improbably films, Gran Torino really does feel refreshing, unflinching. And I don't think it's simply because we're so culturally hypersensitive these days that a slew of sordid soubriquets makes a big bang. I think it's because Eastwood has made about a gazillion movies and by now knows exactly what he's doing.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Movies: Revolutionary Road
I've meant to read this book for years now, and still haven't gotten to it. Nevertheless, I was still able to find the movie disappointing.
Perhaps my hopes were too high. Visually, there is nothing wrong with the picture; the light is buttery and warm on Kate Winslet at home, cool and steely on Leonardo DiCaprio at the train station and in the office. Certain sequences (particularly of all the perfectly choreographed gray and blue and brown hats descending the stairs at Grand Central Terminal) are a bit heavy-handed, but that can, I suppose, be forgiven. But the over-rehearsed delivery of the too-literary screenplay cannot be; Kate and Leo shuttle between giving the sense that they're putting on a stage play (ironic, given that Kate's character is a failed actress) and simply playing house (again ironic, given that the young couple is in a way playing at house). One never quite gets over the fact that one is watching Kate and Leo (rather than Daisy and Frank Wheeler)—disappointing, since we know they are both better than that (cf. Kate in Little Children, in which she plays a ethically-similar role and Leo in The Departed or Catch Me If You Can, protean roles that he plays with intent zest).
Hearing the book described by those who have read it, the story seems to belong to Frank, trapped in a soulless, corporate position despite the ambitions of his youth. But the movie belongs to Daisy, trapped in a house with two children and a third on the way, despite the ambitions of her youth. Frank never knew quite what he wanted to do; Daisy actually wanted to be something (even if wanting to be an actress is something for us to privately smirk about). Frank gets recognized for his work with a promotion; Daisy gets chided for even considering an abortion. Moving to Paris is her idea, an idea with which Frank plays along until it's no longer convenient for him.
I've never considered myself a feminist, but after watching this film, I wanted to go straight to the church of Ortho and thank the gods of contraception on my knees. A friend described the movie's end as "devastating" (Daisy does decide to end her pregnancy, alone at home, and as a result, bleeds to death.)* But I didn't find this devastating at all; in fact, after all the couple's raging arguments, their actually having the third child would be much more devastating. I am, in that sense, rather aligned with the movie's best-written character (and the only one portrayed with any subtlety at all, by Michael Shannon): the clinically-insane John Givings, son of the Wheelers' real estate agent and neighbor (not-so-subtle Kathy Bates). John's mother describes him as "an intellectual," so brings him to the "nice, young Wheelers'" for drinks on his afternoon off from the loony bin. John's turns out to be the only voice of reason, acknowledging that "a lot of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to acknowledge the hopelessness." He is the one that "curses" Daisy's pregnancy, in a beautifully filmed shot in which the focus melts from him, standing in the background, to Daisy's profile, smoking in the foreground.
My final complaint about the film is another ironic one: Kate and Leo are constantly smoking and drinking, and I feel like the actors use these gestural ticks as a crutch. This is ironic, of course, because Frank and Daisy and every American in the 1950s and probably every person everywhere at every time uses smoking and drinking as a crutch, to pass the time, to suffer through, to silence the ghosts. But the blame likely lies with Mendes, for letting them do it, for lingering everlong on the flaming sticks, the clinking ice cubes. Certainly, these moments create tone, but this movie is not supposed to be an amber-colored tone poem. It's supposed to seethe and suppurate. And most times, the cigarettes are a huge distraction. Daisy and Frank have a knock-out, drag-down fight, and Daisy runs out of the house and into the woods. Frank chases her. She screams. He leaves. She lights a cigarette. Wait. When, in the middle of that knock-out, drag-down fight, did she remember to grab her ciggies and engraved silver lighter as she ran out of the house? Right. Mendes just liked the look of her hand up against her face as she leaned against the tree, as shot from the kitchen window, where Frank watches her. If not smoking, what would she have been doing? Something a bit more nuanced? Never.
And that, ultimately, is the reason this film disappoints: it lacks personal nuance. Daisy and Frank are basically typecast. Because they stand in for the American couple, this is within reason, to a degree, but the result is somewhat airless, stagy. For studies on the American Dream's lack of feasibility, so far as movies go, I will stick with Little Children (would have loved to see Patrick Wilson as Frank instead of Leo; I'm certain it would have been a much more dynamic and credible pair). I'll still give the book a chance, eventually.
*Feminist says, "God forbid she actually has a successful abortion and leaves her husband and two kids behind, moving to Paris on her own, and living happily ever after." It's astounding that traditional media still insists on punishment by the death penalty for women who dare to choose their own sexual and procreative fate.
Perhaps my hopes were too high. Visually, there is nothing wrong with the picture; the light is buttery and warm on Kate Winslet at home, cool and steely on Leonardo DiCaprio at the train station and in the office. Certain sequences (particularly of all the perfectly choreographed gray and blue and brown hats descending the stairs at Grand Central Terminal) are a bit heavy-handed, but that can, I suppose, be forgiven. But the over-rehearsed delivery of the too-literary screenplay cannot be; Kate and Leo shuttle between giving the sense that they're putting on a stage play (ironic, given that Kate's character is a failed actress) and simply playing house (again ironic, given that the young couple is in a way playing at house). One never quite gets over the fact that one is watching Kate and Leo (rather than Daisy and Frank Wheeler)—disappointing, since we know they are both better than that (cf. Kate in Little Children, in which she plays a ethically-similar role and Leo in The Departed or Catch Me If You Can, protean roles that he plays with intent zest).
Hearing the book described by those who have read it, the story seems to belong to Frank, trapped in a soulless, corporate position despite the ambitions of his youth. But the movie belongs to Daisy, trapped in a house with two children and a third on the way, despite the ambitions of her youth. Frank never knew quite what he wanted to do; Daisy actually wanted to be something (even if wanting to be an actress is something for us to privately smirk about). Frank gets recognized for his work with a promotion; Daisy gets chided for even considering an abortion. Moving to Paris is her idea, an idea with which Frank plays along until it's no longer convenient for him.
I've never considered myself a feminist, but after watching this film, I wanted to go straight to the church of Ortho and thank the gods of contraception on my knees. A friend described the movie's end as "devastating" (Daisy does decide to end her pregnancy, alone at home, and as a result, bleeds to death.)* But I didn't find this devastating at all; in fact, after all the couple's raging arguments, their actually having the third child would be much more devastating. I am, in that sense, rather aligned with the movie's best-written character (and the only one portrayed with any subtlety at all, by Michael Shannon): the clinically-insane John Givings, son of the Wheelers' real estate agent and neighbor (not-so-subtle Kathy Bates). John's mother describes him as "an intellectual," so brings him to the "nice, young Wheelers'" for drinks on his afternoon off from the loony bin. John's turns out to be the only voice of reason, acknowledging that "a lot of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to acknowledge the hopelessness." He is the one that "curses" Daisy's pregnancy, in a beautifully filmed shot in which the focus melts from him, standing in the background, to Daisy's profile, smoking in the foreground.
My final complaint about the film is another ironic one: Kate and Leo are constantly smoking and drinking, and I feel like the actors use these gestural ticks as a crutch. This is ironic, of course, because Frank and Daisy and every American in the 1950s and probably every person everywhere at every time uses smoking and drinking as a crutch, to pass the time, to suffer through, to silence the ghosts. But the blame likely lies with Mendes, for letting them do it, for lingering everlong on the flaming sticks, the clinking ice cubes. Certainly, these moments create tone, but this movie is not supposed to be an amber-colored tone poem. It's supposed to seethe and suppurate. And most times, the cigarettes are a huge distraction. Daisy and Frank have a knock-out, drag-down fight, and Daisy runs out of the house and into the woods. Frank chases her. She screams. He leaves. She lights a cigarette. Wait. When, in the middle of that knock-out, drag-down fight, did she remember to grab her ciggies and engraved silver lighter as she ran out of the house? Right. Mendes just liked the look of her hand up against her face as she leaned against the tree, as shot from the kitchen window, where Frank watches her. If not smoking, what would she have been doing? Something a bit more nuanced? Never.
And that, ultimately, is the reason this film disappoints: it lacks personal nuance. Daisy and Frank are basically typecast. Because they stand in for the American couple, this is within reason, to a degree, but the result is somewhat airless, stagy. For studies on the American Dream's lack of feasibility, so far as movies go, I will stick with Little Children (would have loved to see Patrick Wilson as Frank instead of Leo; I'm certain it would have been a much more dynamic and credible pair). I'll still give the book a chance, eventually.
*Feminist says, "God forbid she actually has a successful abortion and leaves her husband and two kids behind, moving to Paris on her own, and living happily ever after." It's astounding that traditional media still insists on punishment by the death penalty for women who dare to choose their own sexual and procreative fate.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Books: The Emperor's Children, by Claire Messud
When this book came out two years ago, it was on every Best Of list that I read. Critics were foaming at the mouth with praise for its relevance, insisting that no book has ever captured so well the purgatorial zeitgeist of the Boomer's Ivy-educated babies, whose intellects are all dressed up with nowhere to go.
Messud couldn't have been happier; from the very start, she name-checks a canon of literature ranging from War and Peace to Infinite Jest, clearly with the intent of inserting herself into that canon. Unfortunately, her novel isn't up to snuff. She may have fooled the critics, appealing to their superiority by making references (Emerson! Musil!) that they can take pride in recognizing, but rather than creating anything fresh and/or meaningful, she instead writes a chatty, gossipy telenovela about three hip, if directionless, girls (okay, one's a gay guy, but for all of his interests, he might as well be a third woman) on the brink of—OMG—30.
These three friends went to Brown together years ago, but seem to have lost all their steam. Marina has been working on the same book (a kind of pop-dissertation on the historical relevance of children's clothes) for seven years, stymied by, well, the fact that a book is a hard thing to write (and also by the fact that her father is an incredibly famous left-wing journalist; she lives with her parents in their posh CPW apartment). Luckily, she's just met the dashing Ludivic Seely, a kind of Ayn Rand-cum-Oscar Wilde, who's hell-bent on taking New York by storm with his new cultural magazine The Monitor. Danielle is a public television producer who can't get her documentary on Aboriginies pushed through, and instead settles on a program about liposuction procedures gone awry. Her new love interest is. . . Marina's dad. The third musketeer is Julian, a freelance critic forced to take secret temp jobs to make ends meet. At one of these office gigs, he meets David Cohen, a boring but handsome and successful banker, and immediately moves in with him, disappearing from Marina and Danielle's lives.
The first wrench to get thrown into the system is Marina's cousin Bootie, an idealistic college dropout (he who reads Emerson and Musil, and dismisses Infinite Jest) who moves into the CPW apartment to work for Marina's father. There, he becomes disillusioned with his intellectual hero and writes a rabid, slanderous invective, reviewing the man's secret early drafts of a new, philosophical project, pretentiously entitled "How to Live." Seely wants to publish the article in The Monitor, and Marina does not; this is a small problem, as they are getting married.
Luckily, a new wrench destroys everybody's plans: 9/11. I'm certain that The Emperor's Children has also made the Best of 9/11 Literature list (um, ew?) but I'm a bit uncomfortable about using the disaster as a plot device. The argument can be made that the incident did change the course of every New Yorker's life, but I still find it in poor taste that Messud resorts to invoking a historical incident to give her piddling, self-important characters relevance in the real world. Like each of her other pop-intellectual quotations, 9/11 is, in this way, reduced to cultural flotsam, another shred of gossip, another invitation for the supposedly-savvy reader to empathize.
The book's title is an abridged version of the Seely-inspired title of Marina's book: The Emperor's Children Have No Clothes. Ironically enough, it seems that The Emperor's Children has no clothes, either.
Messud couldn't have been happier; from the very start, she name-checks a canon of literature ranging from War and Peace to Infinite Jest, clearly with the intent of inserting herself into that canon. Unfortunately, her novel isn't up to snuff. She may have fooled the critics, appealing to their superiority by making references (Emerson! Musil!) that they can take pride in recognizing, but rather than creating anything fresh and/or meaningful, she instead writes a chatty, gossipy telenovela about three hip, if directionless, girls (okay, one's a gay guy, but for all of his interests, he might as well be a third woman) on the brink of—OMG—30.
These three friends went to Brown together years ago, but seem to have lost all their steam. Marina has been working on the same book (a kind of pop-dissertation on the historical relevance of children's clothes) for seven years, stymied by, well, the fact that a book is a hard thing to write (and also by the fact that her father is an incredibly famous left-wing journalist; she lives with her parents in their posh CPW apartment). Luckily, she's just met the dashing Ludivic Seely, a kind of Ayn Rand-cum-Oscar Wilde, who's hell-bent on taking New York by storm with his new cultural magazine The Monitor. Danielle is a public television producer who can't get her documentary on Aboriginies pushed through, and instead settles on a program about liposuction procedures gone awry. Her new love interest is. . . Marina's dad. The third musketeer is Julian, a freelance critic forced to take secret temp jobs to make ends meet. At one of these office gigs, he meets David Cohen, a boring but handsome and successful banker, and immediately moves in with him, disappearing from Marina and Danielle's lives.
The first wrench to get thrown into the system is Marina's cousin Bootie, an idealistic college dropout (he who reads Emerson and Musil, and dismisses Infinite Jest) who moves into the CPW apartment to work for Marina's father. There, he becomes disillusioned with his intellectual hero and writes a rabid, slanderous invective, reviewing the man's secret early drafts of a new, philosophical project, pretentiously entitled "How to Live." Seely wants to publish the article in The Monitor, and Marina does not; this is a small problem, as they are getting married.
Luckily, a new wrench destroys everybody's plans: 9/11. I'm certain that The Emperor's Children has also made the Best of 9/11 Literature list (um, ew?) but I'm a bit uncomfortable about using the disaster as a plot device. The argument can be made that the incident did change the course of every New Yorker's life, but I still find it in poor taste that Messud resorts to invoking a historical incident to give her piddling, self-important characters relevance in the real world. Like each of her other pop-intellectual quotations, 9/11 is, in this way, reduced to cultural flotsam, another shred of gossip, another invitation for the supposedly-savvy reader to empathize.
The book's title is an abridged version of the Seely-inspired title of Marina's book: The Emperor's Children Have No Clothes. Ironically enough, it seems that The Emperor's Children has no clothes, either.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Movies: Casino
Well, it's not Goodfellas, but for a movie about Vegas, perhaps it's appropriate that Casino is too big, too bright, and too glammed for its hollow core. Perhaps the otherwise brilliant Ace Rothstein (Robert De Niro, whom I like more and more the more I watch him) has to take a dumb gamble on the hard-boiled hustler Ginger McKenna (the hardly compelling Sharon Stone)—every hero has his Achilles' Heel, and blonde broads are an old standby.
And yet. I have an old beef with characters who make mistakes so dreadful that I can't bear to watch. I realize that, in storytelling, no mistake usually means no plot, so what, if not the lucre-loving whore, could bring about Ace's demise? As a Jewish gambling genius installed at the Tangiers by the mafia to generate profits, what, if not the volatile admixture of his ego and that of a head-turner, could push him over the edge? Really, Mr. Pileggi has no choice. So I suppose I forgive him.
And if he and Scorsese couldn't quite make Goodfellas twice, they could take one of the best parts—Joe Pesci as Tommy—and redo it—Joe Pesci as Nicky: just as wild, just as violent, just as riveting. And how my heart does break the first time he makes it with Ginger. Omph. Wow. Brutal.
And yet. I have an old beef with characters who make mistakes so dreadful that I can't bear to watch. I realize that, in storytelling, no mistake usually means no plot, so what, if not the lucre-loving whore, could bring about Ace's demise? As a Jewish gambling genius installed at the Tangiers by the mafia to generate profits, what, if not the volatile admixture of his ego and that of a head-turner, could push him over the edge? Really, Mr. Pileggi has no choice. So I suppose I forgive him.
And if he and Scorsese couldn't quite make Goodfellas twice, they could take one of the best parts—Joe Pesci as Tommy—and redo it—Joe Pesci as Nicky: just as wild, just as violent, just as riveting. And how my heart does break the first time he makes it with Ginger. Omph. Wow. Brutal.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Movies: Goodfellas
I know I'm a little late to the party, but wow, what a movie. Dare I say I liked it better than the Godfathers? I think I did. I think everything about it is perfect, until the end (rather like The Departed in that sense, when two and a half hours of brilliant movie-making fall apart with a ten second ham-fisted shot of a rat on a banister), when Ray Liotta breaks the fourth wall in the court room—what works in Ferris Bueller is not what works in Goodfellas. Not that Henry Hill and Ferris Bueller don't have tons in common—Hill's surroundings are simply more sinister. We don't want him palling around with us.
Though he's only half Italian, the teenaged Henry Hill idolizes the Sicilian gangsters across the street. Much to his parent's chagrin (Ferris, anyone?) the sweet-smiling, fast-talking kid gets himself employed parking cars and hawking stolen cigarettes, until he gets his first suit, gets "pinched" (but let off), and becomes a bonified gangster. From there, it's straight to the top: money, women, cigars, booze, and poker games. So long, mom and dad, hello smoldering Jewess and the Copacabana. When he does get sent to prison, it's with a few of his best buddies, and they use their connections to smuggle in salamis and bottles of wine, making stunning pasta dinners every night, mincing garlic cloves with razorblades.
And then it's the 70s, and Henry's back on the streets, but he has a little bit of a drug problem, along with a mistress, the most gauche home that you imagine, and a Pater Familias who tells him that he'd better lay off the drugs and fast. But Henry needs the money and he has a couple of buddies happy to help (the loose cannon Tommy (Joe Pesci) and the smooth, trustworthy snake Jimmy (Robert De Niro)). Everyone's rich, and everything's good (except that Pater Familias Paulie (Paul Sorvino) has disowned Henry for staying in the drug game). And then things get dicey again; Jimmy thinks he's going to get "made" and instead he gets "whacked" (saw that one coming). Jimmy makes to hurt Henry's wife, but she knows better and gets away. And, in one of the best drug-addled chase scenes of all time (are there that many?) a very hopped-up Henry Hill runs errands around the neighborhood, trying to make a pasta dinner while preparing a big shipment, followed by a police helicopter, stealing glances in all his mirrors and through the windscreen from behind those black plastic Ray-Bans. (Ferris?)
Of course the gig is up and when Henry's finally arrested, he has no real choice but to rat out the whole gang, going into the witness protection program with his wife, moving to the middle of nowhere where the pasta is "egg noodles with ketchup" (bascially the most depressing thing ever, even for a non-Italian).
Though he's only half Italian, the teenaged Henry Hill idolizes the Sicilian gangsters across the street. Much to his parent's chagrin (Ferris, anyone?) the sweet-smiling, fast-talking kid gets himself employed parking cars and hawking stolen cigarettes, until he gets his first suit, gets "pinched" (but let off), and becomes a bonified gangster. From there, it's straight to the top: money, women, cigars, booze, and poker games. So long, mom and dad, hello smoldering Jewess and the Copacabana. When he does get sent to prison, it's with a few of his best buddies, and they use their connections to smuggle in salamis and bottles of wine, making stunning pasta dinners every night, mincing garlic cloves with razorblades.
And then it's the 70s, and Henry's back on the streets, but he has a little bit of a drug problem, along with a mistress, the most gauche home that you imagine, and a Pater Familias who tells him that he'd better lay off the drugs and fast. But Henry needs the money and he has a couple of buddies happy to help (the loose cannon Tommy (Joe Pesci) and the smooth, trustworthy snake Jimmy (Robert De Niro)). Everyone's rich, and everything's good (except that Pater Familias Paulie (Paul Sorvino) has disowned Henry for staying in the drug game). And then things get dicey again; Jimmy thinks he's going to get "made" and instead he gets "whacked" (saw that one coming). Jimmy makes to hurt Henry's wife, but she knows better and gets away. And, in one of the best drug-addled chase scenes of all time (are there that many?) a very hopped-up Henry Hill runs errands around the neighborhood, trying to make a pasta dinner while preparing a big shipment, followed by a police helicopter, stealing glances in all his mirrors and through the windscreen from behind those black plastic Ray-Bans. (Ferris?)
Of course the gig is up and when Henry's finally arrested, he has no real choice but to rat out the whole gang, going into the witness protection program with his wife, moving to the middle of nowhere where the pasta is "egg noodles with ketchup" (bascially the most depressing thing ever, even for a non-Italian).
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Movies: The Wrestler
Darren Aronofsky: the first go-to dark director who hasn't disappointed me this year (of course, he disappointed me with The Fountain, so he's not golden, but that's not what this is about). You've got to hand it to a guy for making a movie so depressing that the happiest possible ending is to kill off the protagonist. That's real dedication to the truth.
Backing up: Randy "The Ram" (a disturbingly on-point Mickey Rourke) had his glory days as a pro-Wrestler in the 1980s. Twenty years later, he's still wearing his hair bleach blonde and long, and he's still trying to get by wrestling, supplementing his income working stock at a grocery store. When he gets locked out of his trailer for being late on rent, he sleeps in his van. He has an estranged daughter and nurses a crush on an aging stripper (Marisa Tomei, whose animal body is far too hot to be that of an actual aging stripper). Today's wrestling matches are brutal, involving staple guns and broken glass and barbed wire and roach spray to the eyes. Then he has a heart attack and the doctor tells him he can't wrestle anymore, and he cancels the big upcoming rematch with the Ayatollah.
But things are looking up—the stripper convinces him to make amends with his daughter, and they go for a walk on the abandoned boardwalk he brought her to when she small. He cancels the big rematch coming up and takes extra hours at the grocery store, working in the deli. He asks the stripper out for a real date.
But Randy's always been a fuck-up. There's a drunken night out and he misses a dinner date with his daughter; she refuses to ever speak to him again. The stripper refuses to see him outside the club (problems of her own), he cuts his hand on the meat slicer at the deli, and he realizes that he has nothing to live for but wrestling. The rematch is on. The stripper tries to make amends, but it's too late. He goes into the ring; he fights. He feels another heart attack coming on, but he won't stop. He climbs the ropes for his signature move—the Ram Jam—and as he leaps off, the screen goes black: death.
Aside from its philosophical implications, the film is visually viscerally brutal to boot. Aronofsky has always been completely unflinching, leaving it to me to close my eyes during Requiem For a Dream's needle sequences and, now, during most of The Wrestler's wrestling scenes. I readily admit to being squeamish, but it's key that the director is not: seeing Randy's opponent attach dollar bills to his own forehead using a staple gun, whether I can bear to watch it or not, is the ultimate indication of the depths to which our hero has sunk. When Randy puked after that match, I almost did so myself. That is potent filmmaking.
Backing up: Randy "The Ram" (a disturbingly on-point Mickey Rourke) had his glory days as a pro-Wrestler in the 1980s. Twenty years later, he's still wearing his hair bleach blonde and long, and he's still trying to get by wrestling, supplementing his income working stock at a grocery store. When he gets locked out of his trailer for being late on rent, he sleeps in his van. He has an estranged daughter and nurses a crush on an aging stripper (Marisa Tomei, whose animal body is far too hot to be that of an actual aging stripper). Today's wrestling matches are brutal, involving staple guns and broken glass and barbed wire and roach spray to the eyes. Then he has a heart attack and the doctor tells him he can't wrestle anymore, and he cancels the big upcoming rematch with the Ayatollah.
But things are looking up—the stripper convinces him to make amends with his daughter, and they go for a walk on the abandoned boardwalk he brought her to when she small. He cancels the big rematch coming up and takes extra hours at the grocery store, working in the deli. He asks the stripper out for a real date.
But Randy's always been a fuck-up. There's a drunken night out and he misses a dinner date with his daughter; she refuses to ever speak to him again. The stripper refuses to see him outside the club (problems of her own), he cuts his hand on the meat slicer at the deli, and he realizes that he has nothing to live for but wrestling. The rematch is on. The stripper tries to make amends, but it's too late. He goes into the ring; he fights. He feels another heart attack coming on, but he won't stop. He climbs the ropes for his signature move—the Ram Jam—and as he leaps off, the screen goes black: death.
Aside from its philosophical implications, the film is visually viscerally brutal to boot. Aronofsky has always been completely unflinching, leaving it to me to close my eyes during Requiem For a Dream's needle sequences and, now, during most of The Wrestler's wrestling scenes. I readily admit to being squeamish, but it's key that the director is not: seeing Randy's opponent attach dollar bills to his own forehead using a staple gun, whether I can bear to watch it or not, is the ultimate indication of the depths to which our hero has sunk. When Randy puked after that match, I almost did so myself. That is potent filmmaking.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Books: Falconer, by John Cheever
Here is a prison drama easily taken at face-value: the book begins when Farragut arrives at prison, and ends when he escapes. We get some but not much of his back-story, and a curiously detached access to his emotional state while in prison. Farragut is a junkie who curses the guards when they neglect to give him his methadone, but he consistently seems a sane and rational narrator; he is in prison for killing his brother, but recounted in a flashback, the "murder" is perhaps an accident. He is educated enough that he's given a job at a typewriter. He takes a homosexual lover, but with little fanfare: no violence, no doubt, but simple acquiescence to circumstance—it's better than the ravaging loneliness he felt before.
One should always hesitate before reading an author's work autobiographically, but I do think that Cheever's alcoholism and concomitant stint in rehab immediately prior to the writing of this novel is relevant—it was the closest to first-hand experience of prison life Cheever had, and all the frustrations (isolation, deprivation, infantalization, loss of control, lack of privacy, and of course withdrawal) of rehab are similar to those of prison. Too, Cheever's own bisexuality likely explains the ease with which Farragut succumbs to such a relationship (where a less sexually-evolved male writer could only portray homosexual relations as rape, a struggle with power rather than loneliness).
There's something very clean and simple about Cheever's writing—it doesn't call attention to itself, but only tells the story. The story, too, is small; there's a prison uprising, but it's at a neighboring prison, and the incarcerated at Falconer merely hear about it on the radio, and make a half-hearted attempt to join in solidarity by lighting one mattress on fire. Nothing here is epic, grandiose, timeless, melodramatic. Farragut eventually makes his escape by zipping himself into a body bag, leaving the dead man in his bunk, and this is the greatest symbol we're given—a rather functional one at that. As much a fan as I am of the hyper-inflated post-modern novel, I appreciate Cheever's lean functionality, his suppressed rage, his matter-of-fact-ness. There's a silent realization of our choicelessness in most matters, which few novelists—control-freaks most—constantly deny.
One should always hesitate before reading an author's work autobiographically, but I do think that Cheever's alcoholism and concomitant stint in rehab immediately prior to the writing of this novel is relevant—it was the closest to first-hand experience of prison life Cheever had, and all the frustrations (isolation, deprivation, infantalization, loss of control, lack of privacy, and of course withdrawal) of rehab are similar to those of prison. Too, Cheever's own bisexuality likely explains the ease with which Farragut succumbs to such a relationship (where a less sexually-evolved male writer could only portray homosexual relations as rape, a struggle with power rather than loneliness).
There's something very clean and simple about Cheever's writing—it doesn't call attention to itself, but only tells the story. The story, too, is small; there's a prison uprising, but it's at a neighboring prison, and the incarcerated at Falconer merely hear about it on the radio, and make a half-hearted attempt to join in solidarity by lighting one mattress on fire. Nothing here is epic, grandiose, timeless, melodramatic. Farragut eventually makes his escape by zipping himself into a body bag, leaving the dead man in his bunk, and this is the greatest symbol we're given—a rather functional one at that. As much a fan as I am of the hyper-inflated post-modern novel, I appreciate Cheever's lean functionality, his suppressed rage, his matter-of-fact-ness. There's a silent realization of our choicelessness in most matters, which few novelists—control-freaks most—constantly deny.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Movies: Doubt
Another day, another dollar, another disappointment*
I knew by watching the trailer that this film would be ridiculous; there's simply no way to invest billowing black robes with suspense. As a Catholic school girl myself (of the 80s, rather than the 60s) I had a very Sr. Aloysius (Meryl Streep)-like nun as a fourth grade teacher (who insisted that "often" be pronounced with a hard 't,' until I, filled at that age with moxie, demonstrated otherwise with the classroom's dictionary). We didn't have the luck (or the worry, depending) of having a Father Flynn, though there were a few like him at my high school.
I say "like him" in a good way, rather than a damning—since everyone must have an opinion, mine is that he didn't do it. Certainly he could have, but director John Patrick Shanley doesn't stack enough clues against him; the only moment in which we see him in bad light is at the dinner table, carving red meat, red in the face with wine, and the only sin there is gluttony, one that doesn't dovetail neatly with pederasty.
I usually have trouble separating Philip Seymour Hoffman from his roles, and this one was no different. Seeing his red face chuckling piggy-like over meat and wine, hearing his smug explanation for the length of his fingernails, I thought, as I always do, of Freddie Miles in The Talented Mr. Ripley, the role for which the cinema gods created Phil Hoffman. Meryl Streep, for all everyone will coo that she owns her role, also looks like layperson playing dress-up. The crankiness she nails, the self-righteousness as well, but something is still amiss. There's something flat, dare I say lay-person like in the accent of her whine: New Jersey rather than New England. Amy Adams, delightful child actors aside, is the real performer in the film, transitioning from doe-eyed to nervous to shrill to wistful as the plot, which she's inadvertently set in motion, turns around her (I found myself wanting to see her play Brioni in Atonement, a role much the same, but with a bit more literary depth).
In the end, Doubt feels much too short, too small, too quiet, and too stagy. There's no reason why a film made after a stage production should be as shallow; film can do more, and its powers should be harnessed every time.
*Actually, I saw this movie on the same day, and the same dollar, as this one (another dramatic changeling), because I knew they would both suck. I was planing to watch Gran Turino, which will also suck, on the same day and the same dollar, but it was playing on a different floor. Bastards.
I knew by watching the trailer that this film would be ridiculous; there's simply no way to invest billowing black robes with suspense. As a Catholic school girl myself (of the 80s, rather than the 60s) I had a very Sr. Aloysius (Meryl Streep)-like nun as a fourth grade teacher (who insisted that "often" be pronounced with a hard 't,' until I, filled at that age with moxie, demonstrated otherwise with the classroom's dictionary). We didn't have the luck (or the worry, depending) of having a Father Flynn, though there were a few like him at my high school.
I say "like him" in a good way, rather than a damning—since everyone must have an opinion, mine is that he didn't do it. Certainly he could have, but director John Patrick Shanley doesn't stack enough clues against him; the only moment in which we see him in bad light is at the dinner table, carving red meat, red in the face with wine, and the only sin there is gluttony, one that doesn't dovetail neatly with pederasty.
I usually have trouble separating Philip Seymour Hoffman from his roles, and this one was no different. Seeing his red face chuckling piggy-like over meat and wine, hearing his smug explanation for the length of his fingernails, I thought, as I always do, of Freddie Miles in The Talented Mr. Ripley, the role for which the cinema gods created Phil Hoffman. Meryl Streep, for all everyone will coo that she owns her role, also looks like layperson playing dress-up. The crankiness she nails, the self-righteousness as well, but something is still amiss. There's something flat, dare I say lay-person like in the accent of her whine: New Jersey rather than New England. Amy Adams, delightful child actors aside, is the real performer in the film, transitioning from doe-eyed to nervous to shrill to wistful as the plot, which she's inadvertently set in motion, turns around her (I found myself wanting to see her play Brioni in Atonement, a role much the same, but with a bit more literary depth).
In the end, Doubt feels much too short, too small, too quiet, and too stagy. There's no reason why a film made after a stage production should be as shallow; film can do more, and its powers should be harnessed every time.
*Actually, I saw this movie on the same day, and the same dollar, as this one (another dramatic changeling), because I knew they would both suck. I was planing to watch Gran Turino, which will also suck, on the same day and the same dollar, but it was playing on a different floor. Bastards.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Movies: Frost/Nixon
Here's one of those movies that people feel they ought to see, but don't necessarily feel they want to see. Because I allow much of my life to be ruled by oughts, and because it was snowing, and because I was sick, and because my office closed early thanks to the inclement weather, I went to see it. It was, like David Frost's hair, well-primped, but on close inspection disappointingly thin, ultimately fluffy and insubstantial.
What I'd wanted—what I'd been promised, in reviews of both the film and the stage production on which it's based—was meat: an energetic, tooth-and-claw, information-rich exchange between two potent personalities. What I got, instead, was the window-dressing around the exchange: a pretty Diane Sawyer look-alike in giant tortoise-shell glasses, a James Reston Jr. as disheveled as he is disgruntled, and a sensuous Rebecca Hall as Caroline Cushing, Frost's cushion-for-pushin' of the moment. The plot suddenly seemed hackneyed: playboy Frost has a big idea but almost loses the opportunity to change history because he's too busy partying; then, a taste of failure bucks him up, he spends a few all-nighters studying, listens to his colleagues, and makes history. Nixon, a curious cross between a raging bison and an affable grandfather, ultimately concedes in a moment that, in the context of the film, lacks the impact it had historically.
Ultimately, this film is supposed to be about the leading men's performances, but David Frost seems a mere rework of Martin Sheen's Tony Blair in The Queen, and Frank Langella (who is he?) does not define Nixon the way, say, Val Kilmer defines Jim Morrison in The Doors, or Ben Kingsley Mahatma in Gandhi. I didn't even live through the Watergate scandal, but I remain unconvinced. If anyone is successfully impersonating anyone here, it's Rebecca Hall impersonating Eva Green. A small shot does go out to Kevin Bacon for his excellent portrayal of Jack Brennan, Nixon's Chief of Staff, and who has the best (and best-delivered) line of the film: "I think a man's shoes should have laces, Sir."
What I'd wanted—what I'd been promised, in reviews of both the film and the stage production on which it's based—was meat: an energetic, tooth-and-claw, information-rich exchange between two potent personalities. What I got, instead, was the window-dressing around the exchange: a pretty Diane Sawyer look-alike in giant tortoise-shell glasses, a James Reston Jr. as disheveled as he is disgruntled, and a sensuous Rebecca Hall as Caroline Cushing, Frost's cushion-for-pushin' of the moment. The plot suddenly seemed hackneyed: playboy Frost has a big idea but almost loses the opportunity to change history because he's too busy partying; then, a taste of failure bucks him up, he spends a few all-nighters studying, listens to his colleagues, and makes history. Nixon, a curious cross between a raging bison and an affable grandfather, ultimately concedes in a moment that, in the context of the film, lacks the impact it had historically.
Ultimately, this film is supposed to be about the leading men's performances, but David Frost seems a mere rework of Martin Sheen's Tony Blair in The Queen, and Frank Langella (who is he?) does not define Nixon the way, say, Val Kilmer defines Jim Morrison in The Doors, or Ben Kingsley Mahatma in Gandhi. I didn't even live through the Watergate scandal, but I remain unconvinced. If anyone is successfully impersonating anyone here, it's Rebecca Hall impersonating Eva Green. A small shot does go out to Kevin Bacon for his excellent portrayal of Jack Brennan, Nixon's Chief of Staff, and who has the best (and best-delivered) line of the film: "I think a man's shoes should have laces, Sir."
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