Julianne Moore plays a 50-year old linguistic professor afflicted by early-onslaught Alzheimer’s disease. Plays quite well – reserved enough to make you identify with her and face your deep instinctive fear of the disease, and passionately enough to make you weep. Her fans should be happy for her because she was quite terrible in the role of the hysterical actress from Cronenberg’s “Map to the Stars”. She most certainly has a shot at the Oscars given the award potential of disease-suffering characters. Entertainment Weekly have compiled nice visualized stats on the professions of Oscar nominated roles. They should have done one on healthy vs sick personae, a graph like that would have definitely been in favor of the sick.
The film is cathartic — plunging the viewer into the fear and trembling of modern Fate – incurable diseases. Helplessness and horror gradually take over the plot as it follows Alice’s demise through her slowly loosing hold of her Self. At the end she is still there and not there. The reason why she could be still Alice is the thin thread of love still linking her to her beloved and prodigal daughter. The film ends with a close-up on a totally lost Alice still mumbling “love” to a face she probably does not recognize… A weepie!
Category: Film
Film: Birdman, 2014, Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu
The irony of the Golden Globe Award for original script this year for “Birdman” is that it is exactly the script that is the problem of this movie…
It is half “back-stage” comedy/drama (with all the cliche moves typical of that genre), and half allegory. A very confused allegory at that, which cannot draw a clean parable of meaning or communicate a clear message. Its appeal, I believe, comes from this confusedness which some snobbish viewers take for complexity. Well, the story is a complete mess. The writers put every idea that crossed their mind (many of them totally unoriginal and annoying) into the script. It has everything – an actor whose stage life is more real than his real life (how tired is that?!), another actor who wants to make art but is only recognized as a celebrity (another cliche), a critic who just “hates” an actor and is determined to destroy him without even having seen him perform (a totally random and whimsical argument), a mixture of life and art with art dominating life (cliche), etc.
The genre of the allegory is quite treacherous – it requires everything to be thought out on two different planes – on the plane of reality and on the plane of allegory and to make sense on both. All the elements should click together precisely in order to be meaningful. Multiple components of this film are puzzling and defy meaning – the multiple endings, the transformation of the actor into the character of Birdman (after the success of his show?!), his final flight….It is hard to try to interpret a mess — seems like a waste of time.
Mr. Inarritu, mumbled some pretentious nonsense in his acceptance speech about “mirroring” – he seems to be considering himself an intellectual. While he should simply stop writing his own scripts.
Film: Codebreaker, 2011, A Documentary by Clare Beavan, Nic Stacey, Written by Simon Berthon and Craig Warner
A must-see movie! It drives painfully in the viewer mind its tragic truth about the life and fate of Alan Turing, a pure genius, who played crucial role in the winning of WW II by breaking the Enigma code, and who was tried and convicted on the basis of the same laws used against Oscar Wilde in the 19th century. Turing was forced to accept chemical castration in order to avoid being imprisoned for his homosexuality. Eventually, he committed suicide – he could not accept the deteriorating effect of the drugs on his intellect. And this all happened to a man who helped defeat Hitler (and we know what the latter’s treatment of homosexuals was…). The plain facts, delivered in a documentary manner, can be more shattering than the suggestive power of art. The fictionalized story of Turing, as told in “The Imitation Game” and as performed by Benedict Cumberbatch has a sentimental streak that clouds the sheer tragic irony contained in the actual historical events and prevents the realization of truth. Instead of the realization of truth, “The Imitation Game” offers empathy…
TV Film: Olive Kitteridge (2014), directed by Lisa Cholodenko
“Olive Kitteridge” is probably the best film I have seen in a year now. It is based on Elizabeth Strout’s book which won its author a Pulitzer prize for literature. This is one of the rare cases where everything – literary
material, script, acting, directing, music – is in such perfect sync and of such high quality – that the mere pleasure of watching is added on top of experiencing and understanding the drama of the characters. The sentiment is just the right amount and the wittiness – just the right degree.
And even though Frances McDormand’s acting has some excess of curtness and a programmatic element in it, it balances well with the melancholic coolness of Bill Murray and the soft presence of Richard Jenkins. Lisa Cholodenko demonstrates once again a superb taste in choice of material and actors and a deep understanding of the human condition. Thie film is just excellent. Nothing is overstated and nobody is spared yet a gentle forgiveness and despair dominate the ending – a mix that is true to life and lacking in fake “uplifting” messages. It’s a matter of “can you handle the truth” to really enjoy it…
Film: Maps to the Stars, 2014, Directed by David Cronenberg
Can’t quite figure out the source of David Cronenberg’s appeal. He has a claim to originality and intellectualism but everything I have seen from him is pretty mainstream, plus snobbish and murky when it comes to a film’s intellectual message. Quite often, his films border on the tasteless and kitschy. “Maps to the Stars” is a perfect example. (Other past works could serve as an illustration as well – “The History of Violence”- tasteless and banal with one of the worst performances by William Hurt. But also, isn’t Vigo Mortensen, Cronenberg’s favorite actor, one of the most tacky actors alive? He looks like a hairdresser or a pimp or a child molester…Actually, “The History of Violence” looks like something shot by Verhoeven…)
Anyway, why is “Maps to the Stars” such a bad movie? It desperately wants to be a satire (and does it in a hysterical way, matching only the hysterical performance delivered by Julian Moore as a crazy-bitch-Hollywood-actress). The satirical intention is stuffed into a tacky, soapy plot about an incestuous family with murderous tendencies. They are rich and famous but tragically deprived of normality.They talk to themselves, they are suicidal, violent, they whimper in their bathtubs, smoke like maniacs or display other similarly “original” signs of “inner suffering”. The so called “satire” is so trite and literal – e.g. Julian Moore’s character is insanely happy when a tragedy befalls her competitor-actress because she gets to play the role she was after… How flat and unimaginative…Every scene in this film is as contrived and square as this little example.
If you are looking for a real satire of Hollywood, check Robert Altman’s “The Player,” of course…
But once proclaimed an “intellectual,” David Cronenberg will stay one, I suppose, as long as he makes claims to this status either by talking about psychoanalysis, Jung, Burroughs, or quoting Paul Eluard. Though the products he manages to churn with Canadian state support, are not quite intellectual.
Film: God's Pocket (2014) Directed by John Slattery
Actors’ directorial debuts tend to get snubbed – especially if the actor is a handsome man or a pretty lady. Examples abound. John Slattery’s debut which he co-scripted with Alex Metcalf is based on an eponymous novel by Pete Dexter. The film feels like drama in its first half but then its genre gets confusing as dramatic situations are resolved violently in an absurdist manner reminding of the devices of the Coen brothers (Blood Simple). The social layer of the film is still prominent but it is stylized and deviates towards the lurid with its “metonymic” settings switching between the pub, the funeral bureau, industrial sites… The problem with the confusing genre stems from the novel itself – Pete Dexter’s writing favors the sensational and the salacious over meaning and structure. “The Paperboy” (2012), also based on a novel of his, was a cinematic disaster.
Given that, Slattery was actually able to convey more than the literary basis of his film – the picture oozes a kind of melancholic desperation which his low class characters couldn’t possibly articulate.
Film: Boyhood (2014), Written and Directed by Richard Linklater
The film is a typical Linklater project — sensitive, over verbose, overwhelming with dialog, and laden with banality philosophical conversations. But this is how people articulate their lives and human self-insight always touches on the banal.
I loved the film and its lighthearted but also melancholic message that “growing up” is actually the content of one’s life. The main character’s parents were growing up together with their son and their life was as confused at the end as it was in the beginning. Going off to college does not put an end to Mason’s “boyhood” as he was well aware. It is just a “next step” in his life as it is in his mother’s life – only marking different stages. For the mother it is the realization that there might be less “next steps” left.
The fact that the film was shot over a period of 12 years with the same cast and we see the physical change the characters go through – the phases of “mutation” from cute, through puberty-ugly, to weird and uniquely beautiful – is crucial for the message of the film. The gradual building of one’s individuality, the formation of self, illustrated by physical change, lends truth to the film and makes acceptance of its philosophy on a visceral level.
Film: The Counselor, 2013, Directed by Ridley Scott
Cormac McCarthy, the author of the screenplay, is a graphomaniac. The proof is in works like “All the Pretty Horses”, “The Road” and finally – this film which helps highlight all the symptoms of the condition. Even a skilled director like Ridley Scott could not pull out a cogent ‘story’ not to mention some sense out of this pretentious textual mess. What do you think of this piece of wisdom: “When it comes to grief, the normal rules of wealth do not apply. Because grief transcends value. A man would give entire nations to lift grief off his heart and yet, you cannot buy anything with grief, because grief is worthless. What the …?!!! What does this mean? Nothing. It’s a strаin of the mind of a pseudo-philosopher and pseudo-writer who is desperately trying to be original…I should rest my case only after this quote but can’t help mentioning the drug lord citing the poet Antonio Machado. Not that it can’t be done, but Mr. McCarthy does it in a dumb way.
“No Country for Old Man” was a good movie only thanks to the Coen brothers who wrote the screenplay.
Film: Runner Runner, 2013, Directed by Brad Furman
After a streak of very bad movies, it was a relief to watch this one. The movie is not great, but it is skillfully written and well-acted. Its plot is a variation of “Wall Street” and “Boiler Room” – with the same main male characters in the trio – ambitions, entrepreneurial, and smart college drop-out, a mentor, a father. The details differ but the moral is the same – greed is not good. The dramatic quality of the two older films is better. The latest version is more entertaining than anything else. Some very snappy dialogue (written by Brian Koppelman and David Levien) contributes to the pleasure.
Film: "Labor Day", 2013, Directed by Jason Reitman
The film is based on some very bad novel and it is mind-boggling that Jason Reitman would try to resuscitate it. The result is so poor that at certain points, when the plot defies any logic, it turns into its own parody. Examples: mother is given her baby (whom we just saw being still-born) all dressed up and pretty?! ; father roams the pubs, baby in hands, looking for his no-good wife; convict and lonely mother mix together sugar and peaches with their bare hands in a scene, reminiscent of Ghost’s famous pottery scene…
The author of the terrible piece of “non-literature” is Daphne Joyce Maynard, the woman who became famous for being briefly involved with J.D.Salinger and tried to capitalize on that writing about his exploitation of young women, or was it the opposite, him being exploited by young women…
The sad thing here is that Jason Reitman was very desperate for a script, and that eventually he exhibited such a bad taste in choosing/writing this one. Early success, as J.D.Salinger points out, is treacherous.