Frank Miller's Sin City

If you’re a fan of film noir you’ll probably get a kick out of “Sin City”, since this adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel (which I haven’t read) is an ultra-noir that beams your favorite noir elements into a hellish urban fantasy world (okay, not all your favorite elements –  there’s no proper hard-boiled detective).   The anti-heroes in these three interlocking stories (intensely played by Bruce Willis, Clive Owen and Mickey Rourke) have ethical codes as rigorous as Philip Marlowe’s but exist in a universe even darker and more meaningless than the one he inhabited.   Their codes are founded upon loyalty: these are guys who would die to protect and avenge the women in their lives (it matters not that said women are prostitutes and a stripper).  

Shot in expressionistic black and white by director Robert Rodriguez, with Quentin Tarantino credited as “special guest director” (the film utilizes a non-chronological narrative a la Tarantino).   Aficionados of the “Sin City” graphic novel claim that Rodriguez has been remarkably successful in translating its look and feel to the screen (in the film, constant voice-overs act as the equivalent to the captions of a comic book panel).   Myself, I wish the film were a bit funnier and smarter.

- Apr 17, 2005

Millions

Director Danny Boyle veers sharply away from the heroin addicts and zombies of such films as “Trainspotting” and “28 Days Later” to give us this movie from the feel-good school of U.K. filmmaking.

A young boy, Damian (Alex Etel), moves to Manchester, England with his big brother and dad in the wake of his mother’s death.   Although his new school chums’ heroes are all footballers, Damian’s are of a rather different order: he is obsessed with the historic Catholic saints, and comic versions of them appear to him in visions.  

It’s the eve of the U.K.’s transfer from the pound to the Euro.   All cash must be spent or converted or it becomes rubbish.   A train carrying bags of pounds marked for destruction is robbed and one of the bags is pitched off the hurtling train to plunk down near Damian’s play area by the tracks.   He determines to do with the cash what the saints would –  give it to the poor.   Big trouble ensues.  

The film observes that only a small child would attempt to actually act according to the teachings of the saints in the real world.   It doesn’t ask us to share Damian’s outlook despite our adult objections, so much as it represents in its very form a sincere attempt to fully open itself to his guileless imagination and sense of wonder.   It’s as though Boyle make a conscious decision to embrace this material with “defenses down, with the trust of a child”, if I may quote Peter Gabriel.  

There are a moments when the child-like crosses the line into the child-ish, but the movie is suffused with such a playful and inventive spirit and has such a light comic touch that I was disarmed.   It is the most good-hearted film I’ve seen in some time.

- Apr 10, 2005

Downfall

What was it like to be with Hitler near the end, in the underground bunker as the Soviets rained bombs on Berlin?   This German film by Oliver Hirschbiegel takes us there through the eyes of the young secretary he had retained three years earlier, Traudl Junge.   Bernd Eichinger’s script is based largely on the memoirs of this woman, who was manifestly not evil and in fact rather apolitical.   Bruno Ganz is superlative in a performance that brings Hitler down to scale.   Here is a beaten man, a man for whom objective events are manifestly not going his way.   He spews torrents of frothing vitriol on his advisers who report military defeats, but he is kind to Junge, even affable.   It is this portrayal of Hitler’s human side that has made “Downfall” controversial. So what is the point of showing us that this man -- who caused unquantifiable pain and suffering and death, who robbed us of so much –  that this man loved his dog Blondi, for example?   (Although we learn that Eva Bruan used to kick Blondi when Hitler wasn’t looking).   The point is that reality is never black and white, that even a monster has shades of gray.   I’ve often thought that a good film cannot –  indeed, must not –  judge its characters.   It can only present them as they are.   I suppose that ‘Downfall’ must be the ultimate test of that theory.   It is a very delicate tightrope that this film walks and it’s due to its consummate intelligence that it never missteps.     There is a shattering scene at the end, footage of an elderly Junge being interviewed a few years back (she died in 2002).   She says (and I paraphrase): it’s not good enough to say that I was young, that I wasn’t aware of what was going on (a reference to the genocide).   I could have known if I’d wanted to.   This film is a monumental act of respect –  for the complexities of reality and, by extension, for us as an audience.   It is also superlative cinema, with bravura editing and direction and a roving camera that is constantly investigating the claustrophobic corridors of the bunker.   A word should also be said about the key role of sound here, the way the sound of the Soviet bombs is rendered into a constant, almost physical presence.   This is the first truly great film I’ve seen this year.   Essential viewing.   - Apr 1, 2005

Antares

From writer/director Götz Spielmann comes a film from Austria, but don’t look for any waltzes under the moonlight.   I’ve never seen Vienna look so gray and drab as it does here.   This is not the city as romantic backdrop for tourists but rather a film concerned with the everyday lives of the people who live and work there.

The movie is structured as three intertwining stories.   We’re familiar with this strategy, in which each story’s characters impact the lives of the others, if we’ve seen things like Kieslowski’s ‘Decalogue’ (with which it shares the conceit of having all the characters live in the same housing project) and Inarritu’s “Amores Perros” (with which it shares a fateful car crash as linking mechanism).  

The three stories: (1) A family aspiring to middle-class status plans their move out of the projects even as the wife/mother, a nurse, resumes a torrid affair; (2) a grocery store check-out clerk suspects her husband, an immigrant from Yugoslavia, of infidelity (and rightly so); and (3) an abusive man torments his ex, who is having an affair with the immigrant.  

A quick Google search reveals that Antares is a brilliant red star that is the heart of the Scorpion, i.e. the Scorpio constellation.   Antares is “40,000 times brighter than the Sun” and could explode at any time.   It’s a metaphor for the destructive power of the burning passion that compels the abuser, the unfaithful nurse and the immigrant to indulge themselves regardless of the damage wreaked and the pain visited upon others.  

Word of warning: This film is a bit notorious in that some of the intimacies depicted in the first story are not simulated.   For that reason I shan’t recommend it, and certainly not in a forum frequented by my mother!   In any event, the film has individual scenes of great poignancy but does not expand significantly on what the likes of Kieslowski and Inarritu have accomplished.

- Mar 26, 2005

Dear Frankie

This U.K. film features Emily Mortimer as a woman who settles in the Scottish port town of Glasgow with her mother and her young son Frankie, who is deaf.   They’ve been picking up and moving every few years, clearly running from something in her past.   The family’s life revolves around the missing father: the mother has spun a tale to Frankie that his father is a sailor on a merchant boat traveling the world.   Frankie charts his father’s progress on the map on his bedroom wall and writes letters to his father that arrive at a P.O. box where his mom picks them up and writes back in the guise of the father.   Nearly the only time we hear Frankie’s voice is when we hear him reading the letters in his head.   One day the very boat that Frankie’s dad is meant to be aboard pulls into the harbor, and so his mother hires a mysterious stranger to impersonate Frankie’s dad. Unfortunately the film treads perilously close to mainstream territory.   I really rather resent the mainstream film tactic, employed here, of the use of music to cue us as to how we’re meant to feel.   Look at a Mike Leigh film: the performances speak for themselves and achieve maximum emotional impact without a score beating you about the head.   Further, the mysterious stranger comes close to being the sort of rugged, brooding yet good man that might have wandered in from an intolerable mainstream romantic picture.     The ending is very nicely handled in such a way that the theme becomes the ethics and utility of illusions, both for those who foster them and for those who believe in them (sometimes knowingly).   It’s also about finally letting the illusions go.   I also like the way the film handles the issue of domestic violence: though it never depicts it or gives it centrality, it’s the engine that motivates the entire piece.   - Mar 18, 2005   In the end, charming but inessential viewing.