Midnight in Paris

I absolutely loved this comic fantasy from Woody Allen, in which Owen Wilson finds himself whisked into the world Hemingway wrote about in  “A Moveable Feast” (one of my favorite books).  The movie had me right from its opening moments, a montage of Paris set to café jazz: right away it evokes the magic of the place.  Throughout the film I had the uncanny sense that my own memories of wandering Paris were being projected on the screen, and never moreso than in that opening montage: here is a little “rue” on the Left Bank whose cobblestones I might have trod myself.  There is the Grand Palais, the Champs Elysees, the Louvre, Montmarte.  The “ponts” over the Seine, the Ile de la Cite, Notre Dame.  And the parks: the Jardin du Luxembourg, the Tuileries, and wasn’t that a glimpse of that great little park tucked behind the Palais-Royal?  Didn’t I enjoy a delicious salad nicoise at a little table outside that very café?

In a city made for magical experiences, this movie is about a man having just those: Wilson, very good in the surrogate Woody role, plays a dreamy screenwriter who’s made good money doing what he considers hackwork for Hollywood.  Now he’s working up a draft manuscript of a novel.  For him, the ultimate time to be alive would have been Paris in the twenties.  He and his fiancé, Rachel McAdams, are visiting Paris to coincide with her dad’s business trip; Rachel and her parents do not “get” the City of Light, and the movie has fun with her dad’s admiration for that antithesis of twenties-Paris bohemianism: Tea Party Republicanism. As for McAdams, she’s taken with a know-it-all friend (Michael Sheen) whom they happen to run into.  He and his wife start accompanying them everywhere; his pedantry significantly cramps Wilson’s enjoyment of the Rodin gardens and Versailles.  One evening he’s out wandering, lost.  As the clock chimes midnight a 1920’s car pulls up and bids him enter.  His first clue that something’s a little off comes when he meets Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald at a party.

During his nightly time travels he meets the great writers, painters and filmmakers of the Lost Generation.  I love the surrealist tete-a-tete at the brasserie with Dali, Man Ray and Bunuel.  Corey Still is a lot of fun as a Hemingway never without a glint of manly fortitude in his eye, the very model of gusto and vigor, never happier than when recounting with hushed intensity a WWI battle story.  Hemingway ushers him into the salon of Gertrude Stein (she agrees to read his manuscript), where he meets Picasso and the painter’s current muse, Marion Cotillard, with whom he finds himself falling in love. (Turns out she doesn’t think the twenties are all that hot: for her, the great time to be alive would have been the “Belle Epoque.”)

For those of us who love Paris, part of what we’re doing when we visit, consciously or not, is hoping to conjure up or somehow visit or touch the magic of another time, a romantic time that exists in our imagination as much as anywhere.  I mean, I remember how thrilled I was to be at Shakespeare and Co. books.  As Wilson’s character emerged from that legendary bookstore, I thought of my own time there, reclining on a futon amidst the upstairs stacks, perusing various volumes that I’d idly reach up and pluck from the shelves.  I knew in the back of my mind that I was romanticizing the place a bit, that it wasn’t really the same anymore as it was in the twenties.  However, I refuse to believe that I was all wrong to feel there was still magic there.  Everyone in every age thinks that the golden age was another time, but really, the golden age, like Paris itself, is in us.

Rating: ****

Key to ratings:

***** (essential viewing)
**** (excellent)
*** (worth a look)
** (forgettable)
* (rubbish!!)

- June 16, 2011

Film Socialisme

Godard is a giant of film.  That said, a lot of especially his late-period stuff is pretty outside our frames of reference, particularly as Americans.  I think the first thing to keep in mind when thinking about “Film Socialisme” (which may by the 80-year-old’s last film) is that he’s not trying to entertain you.  Rather, the sort of Brechtian idea of “dialectical film,” as I (struggle to) understand it, is to foreground the relationship between the observer and the movie.  “The observer is a necessary and equal participant,” as film writer James Monaco puts it.  Instead of entertainment, a movie can be “a forum for examination and discussion.”

On the other hand, watching late Godard is like reading Joyce or Pynchon in that there’s always a playfulness there, and you’re almost always rewarded for getting through the difficult bits with a passage of disarming beauty or tenderness, of delightful wit or poetry.  He’s not contemptuous of the audience.  Quite the contrary: the whole approach of “dialectical film” is to get you involved.      

The first section takes place aboard a gleaming cruise ship.  It’s a look at the politics of pleasure, maybe.  People gamble.  They disco dance.  A young woman in her cabin watches a YouTube video of kittens on her laptop.  (We see a minute or two of this “entertainment”.  It’s very cute and funny indeed.)  We meet various characters.  They represent figures from history or literature, maybe even European nations.  Patti Smith is one of them (she’s said that “Breathless” was a very important film in her life).  We hear asynchronous voices, the streaming of various consciousnesses.  (Further obscuring the film’s meaning for English speakers are the subtitles, which are rendered in “Navajo English,” often appearing in groups of three portmanteaus.)  Visually, we get the backlit shots that Godard’s been using at least since “Weekend,” as people are silhouetted against windows on the sea.  He plays with various textures of film stock.  As always, the colors are vivid and beautiful (it’s photographed by Fabrice Aragno and Paul Grivas). 

The second part of the film is a portrait of a rural family and the garage they own.  Some sort of paparazzi-like documentarians hover about, while the boy fends them off with a play sword.  The last third is given over to that sort of beautiful montage that we saw in “Histoires du Cinema,” mixing Hollywood, documentary and original footage.  Images flicker, toggle, blend, wax and wane almost as if lit like a lantern from within.  There’s an homage to Godard’s dialectical montage hero, Eisenstein, original footage of a tour group walking the Odessa steps mixed with footage from that famous sequence itself (one of the most powerful sequences in all of film). 

There is actually a lot of feeling in the film, too.  And that’s the thing.  Even though I’ve read a few things in my time, I can’t pretend I have anywhere near the background to understand everything Godard’s doing here.  (And his people do read: at one point a woman reads Balzac in front of a gas pump as a llama looks on.)  Still, his work connects with me on some emotional level.  There is an elegiac tone for things lost, in art and in politics, that moves me very much.    

So, the montage of “Film Socialisme” is pretty much the mix that’s been his subject on along.  Capitalism.  Liberation stuggles.  Fascism.  Energy.  The Europe of antiquity versus today.  Painting.  Hollywood.   Animals and children.  What does it all mean?  How do all the elements interrelate?  That’s for us, the audience, to figure out.  As for me, I’m still thinking about it.  As for Godard, don’t look to him for answers: the final shot of the movie, and perhaps the capstone to this singularly fascinating director’s career?  A title reading simply, “No Comment”.

Rating: ****

Key to ratings:

 ***** (essential viewing)

**** (excellent)

*** (worth a look)

** (forgettable)

* (rubbish!!)

 - June 16, 2011

Bridesmaids

“Bridesmaids” is very funny indeed.   It’s a vehicle for the talents of Kristen Wiig, a gifted comedienne, who also co-wrote.   She stars as a hapless but sympathetic screw-up.   Though a talented baker, she couldn't get her bakery off the ground; her guy is a cad (John Hamm); she lives in an apartment with two funny (that is to say, ha-ha AND strange) English people, an adult brother and sister.  

Her best friend (Maya Rudolph, always a pleasure) is getting married.   In Rudolph and Wiig we have two leads who are very, very smart actresses; completing the trifecta is bridesmaid Rose Byrne.   A rivalry develops between the impecunious Wiig and the beautiful, filthy-rich Byrne, who’s acting as wedding planner: a competition not for the hand of a man but for the position of Rudolph’s best friend.   (The scene of their one-upping toast to the bride is a little gem.)   There’s also a side plot about Wiig’s budding relationship with a likable state trooper (Chris O’Dowd).    

The picture contains two uproarious set-pieces: one is a by-now notorious sequence meant to go down in the annals (I had a pun there but I'll save it) of gross-out comedy, involving food poisoning in a posh wedding dress store.   It really works, I think, because it goes so low.   The scene was apparently insisted on by producer Judd Apatow.   Now there are interesting things about his approach--such as naturalism and levels of truth you don’t often see on screen, much less in comedy--but I’ve gotta say Apatow doesn’t really do it for me (though I’m only just now getting around to seeing “Freaks and Geeks”: I absolutely love it so far).   For me his stuff is chuckle fodder, while my favorite comedy makes my think I’m going to literalize the expression and actually die laughing.   In this case, though, Apatow was right.   Wiig is so good: pasty, covered in flop sweat, in the throes of food poisoning but trying to deny it (it was she who chose the restaurant) while Byrne tries to make her succumb.   (In an odd way, the movie's highlighting of, say, their excretory functions serves not to dehumanize but to humanize women.)    

The other great set-piece involves Wiig, full of Byrne-supplied drugs and drink, and her movements throughout the fuselage of a plane bound for Vegas.   It just keeps building; the audience’s laughter comes in waves, a bigger one cresting just as the last breaks, finally leaving us happily breathless on the shore.

Of the players in the bridesmaid posse, Melissa McCarthy is particularly funny.   Built like a linebacker, she has a great heart and she’s completely guileless.   At times she reminds me of a distaff Ricky Gervais, and that’s high praise coming from me.   Byrne is really good as well, finally revealing her character’s humanity and sadness.   And though Wiig actually IS kinda sexy--she has great long legs--like all great comedians she's funny just to look at as well.   She’s something of a physical cartoon: slightly goofy-looking features (when she pulls a face she reminds me slightly of the claymation character Wallace off of "Wallace & Gromit"), a gangly, awkward body.

So the picture embodies a host of interesting contradictions, in comedy and in the culture, that have made it in many ways the comedy of its time: oppositions between Apatow's style and Wiig's vision, men and women, commercial gamble and desire to play it safe, feminism and conservatism, lowbrow and smart.   And while I wouldn’t say it’s quite as funny as, say, “There’s Something About Mary” (which was not only the comedy of ITS time but also one of my favorite movies of that era), it’s got similar moments of joie de vivre.

-- June 15, 2011

Rating: ****   

Key to ratings:

***** (essential viewing)
**** (excellent)
*** (worth a look)
** (forgettable)
* (rubbish!!)

- June 15, 2011

Tree of Life

 

Terrence Malick is one of the true poets of the cinema, one who still believes that the medium could be a storehouse of mystery and wonder.  John Lennon once said of “2001” that it should be shown in a temple 24 hours a day.  The same is true of “The Tree of Life”.  

It takes you to the farthest reaches of the universe, from the beginning of time until the end, from vistas almost too vast to be taken in by the human senses to cellular views of the origins of life.  It seems to be showing us that while a human life is very small and very short, relatively, it is an equivalent wonder.  Soon we are watching a story about a boy growing up with his brothers in the suburbs of Waco, Texas in the 50s, an often idyllic existence of playing in fields and woods.  The narrative unfurls like a ribbon, the camera floating as if in memory or dream.  Brad Pitt does nuanced work as an oppressive, exacting father.  He feels like a failure: he worked so hard to bring his various ideas and schemes to fruition but never found success.  An intimidating presence, he does not countenance any backtalk at the table, even from his wife (and there’s a grueling scene where he physically restrains her).  Everyone just breathes easier when he’s not around.  However, this is not a one-note character: the father is also a kind, sensitive man who loves classical music and is the organist for the church.  He loves his family, truly and deeply.  

The unknown Jessica Chastain plays the wife and mother.  We hear her inner narration more often than she actually speaks.  She is a Christian, a gentle, loving soul.  You could criticize the way her character is conceived: she is a saint (and Chastain is as beautiful as any Mary ever painted), but we never really get to know her.  But just like in those Renaissance paintings, there is a very, very important message about humanity in Jessica Chastain’s face, in the way she looks at her sons; it’s about love and it’s about humanity and it’s so very feminine and human.

She teaches the boys to live "the way of grace" as opposed to "the way of nature," while the father teaches them that you can’t be too nice and get ahead in this world.  The older boy rebels; he grows up to be an architect played by Sean Penn.  We see that he’s achieved some level of success that his father never reached, but he’s unhappy, troubled.  He moves through sterile, antiseptic environments.  

But the film is most transcendent for me when it foregoes narrative entirely, aspiring to the state of music or poetry.  Some will say it’s a deeply religious piece.  I won’t disagree, but I’m an atheist and it spoke to me profoundly.  You might also interpret its visions of the impersonal machinations of the universe into which the characters hurl their cries to God as a depiction of the opposite: a great, absent void. 

But then there is Penn near the end, stumbling upon what may be heaven, out by the edge of the sea.  What is certain is that he’s come to a place of forgiveness and grace, surrounded by people with whom he’s loved and warred in his life--his mother is there, and his father, his brothers--and the score explodes into an ode to joy.   At those moments, seeing "The Tree of Life" on a huge screen with a great sound system was an exultant and, yes, spiritual experience.  It is staggeringly ambitious, but it’s also deeply humble in the face of the numinous, whether that comes in the form of a field of sunflowers, a nebulae at the farthest reaches of the universe, or the way a mother’s face is reflected in that of her son.

 

Rating: *****

Key to ratings:

***** (essential viewing)

**** (excellent)

*** (worth a look)

** (forgettable)

* (rubbish!!)

- June 15, 2011

Scream 4

I’m only somewhat embarrassed to admit the extent to which that first “Scream” picture captured my imagination back in the day.  Not only were the director, Wes Craven, and the writer, Kevin Williamson, having fun with the rules and elements and structure of the horror genre, but the people in the movie were, too: hey, they were having fun with the rules even as those rules got them filleted.  The reveal of the two teen sociopaths at the end was funny and disturbing at once: there was a ring of psychological truth in their inability to distinguish reality from fantasy.  The ethos of everyone involved in “Scream” seemed to be “it’s all in fun”, but the ending said, okay, here’s what happens when that sort of thinking gets carried over into “real life”.
 
If I’m honest though, I have to admit what it really was: I had a MASSIVE crush on Neve Campbell.  Despite ever-diminishing returns, my ardor for Neve kept me on the edge of my seat throughout the trilogy.  Well, Neve still looks great representing my generation in "Scream 4", and the rest of the original crew, David Arquette and Courtney Cox, is back as well.  We’ve got Craven directing a Williamson-penned script, in which a killer is reenacting the crimes of the original movies, itself a comment on the litany of what has by now become its own genre (“Scream” movies).

So why is it that what should be a pop thrill is more like a can of flat pop?  Well, you’ve got to give the basic elements a more vigorous, imaginative spin than this.  There’s a secret party in a barn where the kids are showing a marathon of the “Stab!” movies (based on the "true events" we saw in the “Scream” trilogy), and investigative reporter Cox is sneaking around setting up surveillance cameras.  The plethora of screens and cameras should be producing a meta-induced buzz, yet the staging has little imagination, the lines aren’t funny enough...there’s just no kick to it.

There were moments when I felt that old “Scream” frisson, though, and those were whenever Hayden Panettiere was on screen.  She’s like a petite, high-school version of a sexy De Palma platinum blonde (who were in turn homages to Hitchcock blondes).  As a teenage horror movie fan who can hold her own with the geek boys, she has a perpetual sly, knowing smile—her expression itself embodies everything these movies are supposed to be about—and she’s just right for the sort of stylized, artificial reality that these people live in.  Maybe it’s too much to say she’s got some of the charisma of a young Stanwyck, but I’m gonna take it there.

The opening sequence is great, as well, in which we keep pulling out of one horror picture after another --each time to a couple of young women watching the movie on a couch, analyzing and critiquing the movie and the genre with a whip-smart acuity before finding that they are living a horror movie themselves--until we’re in “the real world”.  And yet we have that tingly, uneasy sensation that we’re still in that hyper-real, horror-movie land, that pleasurable sense of impending anarchy amidst suburban calm.  And we know it’s all in fun.  That’s the feeling we want from this movie, and which it doesn’t provide often enough.

Rating: ** 

Key to ratings:

***** (essential viewing)
**** (excellent)
*** (worth a look)
** (forgettable)
* (rubbish!!)

- April 28, 2011