What Do You Think of This Movie, Old Sport? -- Reflections on "The Great Gatsby" (2012)

Everything you need to know about this film is said in this one shot.

“Gatsby? What Gatsby?”

So asks the lovely Daisy Buchannan (Carey Mulligan) at the beginning of Baz Luhrmann’s Bacchanalian spectacle, and while it is one of literature’s most intriguing and oft analyzed questions, in this movie it’s quite a snoozer. For all of Fitzgerald’s intrigue and ambiguity, Luhrmann’s ostentatious literalism does not do the question justice, and as a result The Great Gatsby is a group of beautiful parts trying to find connection to a hollow whole.

At the film’s empty center is Leonardo DiCaprio as the elusive Jay Gatsby, a self-made man of whom many speak and rumor, but few actually know. One of those that know him is Nick Carroway (Tobey Maguire), a Midwestern boy come to the bright lights and big promises of 1920s New York City, eschewing his dreams of being a writer to make his fortune selling bonds on Wall Street. Nick moves into the Long Island section of New York called West Egg next door to Gatsby, whose wild parties thrill the young man, and whose pensive midnight strolls along the dock to reach out for an elusive green light across the bay mystify him. After a remarkably long set up, Gatsby involves Nick in his plans to win back the heart of Nick’s aforementioned cousin, Daisy, for whom Gatsby carries a torch.

For many reasons, Baz Luhrmann is the perfect director for Gatsby. He is wild, untamed, doesn’t seem too concerned with looking at how all the pieces fit before jumping in to put them together. I’ve always enjoyed his crazy, adrenalized style for what it offers in contrast to other films. Yet, Luhrmann’s desire to craft a story has often felt overshadowed by his style. His work on Gatsby is further evidence of this. Individual scenes pop – especially Gatsby’s first appearance, Daisy’s tour of Gatsby’s estate, and the climatic war of words between Gatsby and Daisy’s brutish hubby, Tom (Joel Edgerton) – but the film does not have much narrative flow, getting caught in a quagmire of voice over narration, repetitious party scenes, swooping crane shots, and Gatsby’s drinking-game level use of the term “Old Sport” for every male character in the movie.

The biggest problem is Nick Carraway. The fault does not lie in Tobey Maguire’s performance, which is the standard Tobey Maguire performance – wide-eyed, boyish, bland – but in the way Nick’s character is used. In the novel, he’s an audience surrogate, taking us into this glamorous, seductive, empty world. He’s supposed to be that here, too, but because of the way Luhrmann feels compelled to include Nick in every single scene, Nick almost seems creepy. Hey, there’s Gatsby and Daisy finally making out – and Nick’s watching. At one point, Tom Buchanan even remarks on how much Nick likes to watch, and the explicit shout out to Nick’s voyeurism only serves to separate him from the story in such a way that he almost feels unnecessary. He’s a fly-on-the-wall, alright, but one you wish you could swat. And why Gatsby finds any connection to this kid, beside his obvious relation to Daisy, is beyond me. Is Gatsby merely using him, or is there something else between them – the respect of self-made men, perhaps, or something homo-erotic? Hard to say, and Luhrmann never tries to find out.

One thing the film absolutely seems to understand and excel at is painting the old money world of East Egg and its characters as shallow, selfish, solipsistic people. If this movie had wanted to, I’m sure it could have used the adaptation of the novel to create a satire of Wall Street’s wealthy elite, circa 2000, before the crash of ’08 by showing the parallels between the Buchanan’s and our current society’s rich and powerful. But I think the only thing this movie has on its mind is extolling the virtues of the self-made man.

Gatsby is a bit of a slog, but it is earnest and reverential to the source material. The spectacular visuals, costuming, and production design are remarkable. I just wish the flow and focus of the story had matched.

What I've Been Watching -- May 2013

  Killing Them Softly (2012) ***1/2

Perhaps Andrew Dominik’s crime film is a bit heavy-handed with all the sound clips from the 2008 election playing on every TV and car radio as his characters skulk around the outskirts of what seems to be Detroit, but Killing Them Softly is electric filmmaking. This is a filmmaker that knows what he wants his cinema to do – to stir, to unsettle, to remove the Emperor’s clothes.

Killing Them Softly is an excellent allegory of sorts, reveling in its central premise that the America that is publicly on display has little to do with the America in the shadows. The corporatization of the United States has not only sunk its teeth into Wall Street and the White House, but in the local mafia, too. Death sentences for double crossing hoods has to be determined by committee, and the public pressure to respond to the fleecing of criminals is really no different than anything we’ve been watching on our TVs for the last several years.

Dominik’s eye is exceptional, as is his script, and he gets a terrific performance out of Brad Pitt as a hired hitman who sees this world as it really is – not as a land of opportunity, but as a land of “fuck you, pay me.” It’s a cynical film, going down as bitter as the drinks these criminals swallow, but it is a film with a definitive personality and vision. And you don’t get too many movies with a final line of dialogue as rousing as this one has.

Holy Motors (2012) ***1/2

A freaky trip of a movie, and I can honestly say I’m not sure if I understand what director Leos Carax was going for. One thing is for sure: Holy Motors is a spellbinding cinematic quest. It is equal parts absurd art film, engaging human drama, and visual buffet. As I watched it, I couldn’t stop thinking of David Lynch at first, but about halfway through the film took on a life of its own that was unlike anything else I’ve ever seen.

The film follows a day in the life of a man known only as DL. He’s an actor who drives around a metropolitan city in a limo, stopping for “appointments” in which he dresses up in character and enters into a life not quite his own, yet fully his own. At one point he’s an insane homeless man who eats people, at another he’s a computerized alien seeking a mate; he plays a dying uncle, a devoted father, a long lost lover, and eventually himself. It’s a lot of roles for one man to have, and actor Denis Lavant is a maestro, embodying each role with a human touch we seldom get by American actors. For all the film’s crazy absurdity, it is an undeniably human story, which I think is trying to expose all the roles we escape into in our own lives as we deal with our own pain. The beginning of the film seems to highlight this as the director, Leos Carax, himself plays a character having a dream in which he enters a cinema full of sleeping patrons to watch the very film we are about to witness.

I can’t say I got what the film is trying to say, but I know that the ride is a great one if you like challenging pieces of art. It’s definitely a ride that requires a return visit.

The Guilt Trip (2012) **

Barbara Streisand does not do many movies anymore. At one point she was one of the most popular box office draws. She is still a cherished entity in the movie industry, as evidenced by her appearance at this year’s Oscar ceremony. So, what sort of film does she choose to make when she returns to the big screen? The Guilt Trip, a 90-minute sitcom co-starring Seth Rogen, whose balls were clipped upon receipt of this trite, miserable script.

Here, Streisand plays the stereotypical Jewish mother – nagging, offering unsolicited advice, always looking to feed everyone, using guilt as a weapon – and while she tries to bring her ethos to the role, she is never quite able to overcome the lame one-liners she has to chew on. Rogen has it even worse, playing the straight man role here so prim and properly that he is hardly recognizable. I imagine he only took the role because he wanted to work with Babs – a decision that makes perfect sense in our Bucket List world.

This film is a Mother’s Day edition of Planes, Trains and Automobiles that will no doubt be a laugh riot among those that worship CBS sitcoms. To me, it was just an episodic mess in which we have to endure Babs and Rogen on a road trip in which Rogen is looking to get his mom hooked up with a long lost love. Along the way they hit up all the taboo, uncomfortable places for a mom and a son to go to – strip clubs, bars, cramped motel rooms, job interviews. And, of course there is the requisite emotional moments where we are supposed to realize that mom’s are people, too. Ugh. This movie was much better when Albert Brooks called on Debbie Reynolds to star in his brilliant comedy, Mother.

Hell, even Psycho had better mother-son humor.

Hitchcock (2012) **1/2

What is this movie trying to be? A Hitchcock tribute? A love story about the master of suspense? A biopic about the corpulent dude that risked everything to make a cinema classic? Regardless, it’s not very effective at any of them. Hitchcock tries really hard to be good, but it is about as good at being good as poor Norman Bates himself.

This is sad because it’s clear that Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren really invest themselves in their roles as Hitch and Alma, Hitch’s long suffering wife. They have an electric chemistry whenever they are on screen, but then the film decides to spoil that chemistry by trying to inject plot into the fold. Director Sacha Gervasi should have paid more attention to the Marilyn Monroe biopic, My Week with Marilyn when putting this movie together. That film allowed its plot to meander in order to give the actors room to breathe and connect with each other. I think that’s what most people want with a biopic anyway – to feel like they are witnessing great icons in action, as if they are living beings. We want to feel like a fly on the wall as they live the glamorous lives we have long suspected they had. Unfortunately at times, Hitchcock feels more like a trip to the wax museum, and for as good as Hopkins is he often comes across more as a caricature than a real human being.

Despite the fact that the movie is based on Stephen Rebello’s excellent book about the making of Psycho, I have a nagging suspicion that the best biopic we could get about Hitchcock would be one dealing with the making of Vertigo. After all, how does a man approach the making of a movie that was so remarkably personal and – possibly – autobiographical.

The Bourne Legacy (2012) **

Is it too much to ask that an action movie actually be fun to watch? The Bourne Legacy begins in the least interesting of settings – Alaska. Now, maybe that’s unfair, since The Grey was one of my favorite movies last year, but let’s be honest: unless you’re Liam Neeson fighting wolves, all you’re going to get from an Alaskan set is gorgeous vistas and not much else. And that’s pretty much what Tony Gilroy gives us for the first hour of this slug of a movie – Alaskan vistas intercut with government bureaucrats talking about super soldiers and double crosses.

Once the action starts, though, the movie doesn’t get much better. This may have something to do with the casting of Jeremy Renner as Aaron Cross, a Jason Bourne type who doesn’t have the luxury of amnesia to make him interesting. Part of what made The Bourne Identity so great was that Bourne had amnesia, which meant we had to discover his abilities and all the surrounding intrigue right along with him. In The Bourne Legacy, Aaron Cross is fully integrated into his world, and unless we know how messed up the government agency he works for is, there isn’t much for us to care about. I didn’t want this movie to be a redux of The Bourne Identity, but without a charismatic lead that I could be invested in, I sort of want to file this movie under “Never Should Have Been Made.”

Besides, Jeremy Renner is not a great lead actor. As much as studios have been trying to push him as a leading man, he just isn’t. His best work – The Hurt Locker, The Town – was in supporting roles working off of well-built casts. He’s like the number two guy on a great sports team. There’s nothing wrong with this. I just hope he realizes it before his career goes the way Ryan Reynolds’ seems to be.

All Style, Not Much Else -- Reflections on "The Paperboy" (2012)

These men might actually be audience members watching this movie.

[Note: there are spoilers in this review, so don’t read unless you’ve A) seen the film, or B) like to be spoiled]

Lee Daniels’s The Paperboy is a lurid, dark morass of a film. Like its characters, it is clothed in garish colors, tinted with 60s highlights, and has absolutely no sense of direction or morality. And, like its characters, it is trying real hard to have meaning, but ultimately winds up being about nothing.

The film starts off as a right-to-life tale. Jack Jansen (Zac Efron) gets tasked with being the driver for his big time newspaper reporter brother, Ward (Matthew McConaughey) and Ward’s colleague, Yardley (David Oyelowo) as they pursue the truth behind the murder of a small town sheriff at the hands of a disgusting pustule of a human named Hillary Van Wetter (John Cusack). Van Wetter’s pen pal girlfriend, Charlotte (Nicole Kidman), is looking to rescue her man from the death penalty and brings all her goods (both literary and physical) to the table to help them. The early question is whether or not Van Wetter, repulsive or not, deserves fair representation under the law. This is a question that better films, like Tim Robbins’s Dead Man Walking, have explored already to greater depth. And just as Daniels’s film begins making some headway in this direction, he switches stories on us.

Eventually, the movie becomes a banal sex drama in which Jack falls in love with Charlotte despite her declarations of love for Hillary and rejection of Jack’s advances. There is next-to-no heat between Efron and Kidman, and while their age difference is referenced (literally at one point, and at another as we see Jack reading a copy of Nabokov’s Lolita on the beach) it only matters as a talking point. The second half of the movie deals with this lame love story, the high point being when Charlotte is forced to urinate on Jack after he is attacked by jellyfish at the beach. The scene is meant to be racy, but it plays more as a curiosity than anything erotic.

But the film finishes as a thriller. Eventually, Hillary is released from prison, and takes Charlotte away to live in a swamp, forcing the heroic Jack and his brother to try to redeem her by rescuing her from Hillary’s kingdom on the swamp. It’s an anti-climatic mess that doesn’t quite pick up any steam, and never really builds on tension.

 I like the style of the film. It looks like a washed out print from 1968, and the production design is spot on. The casting is terrific, for the most part, with Efron looking the part more than actually playing it. McConaghey, whose character we eventually discover is a closeted homosexual with a desire for black men, is fantastic, and should have been the film’s focal character. I was also impressed by Macy Gray’s performance as Anita, the Jansen’s servant, and our story’s narrator. Her agitation and natural anxiety keep the story rolling when the love story begins bogging it down.

I’m not sure what Lee Daniels was thinking when he took on this project. His previous movie, Precious, was an outstanding social criticism about our education and social service systems and how much power they wield in the lives of the underprivileged. The Paperboy has no such ambition thematically. Since it bounces around a lot in the focus of its story, at any one time it can be about unrequited lust, the presumptuous nature of the criminal justice system, race and ambition, and the blindness of love. But it never says anything about any of these topics that isn’t immediately obvious, or constructed with cliché symbols. Hell, Ward loses sight in one eye during a homosexual liaison gone wrong as evidence that our lust blinds us to the truth of people’s convictions. This wouldn’t be so bad if the film went somewhere with it; but it just uses it as a footnote before jumping on to the next plot point.

I think this movie just got away from him, because beyond all the talk about meaning and symbols, the movie is no fun. You would think that seeing Nicole Kidman dress as a 60s sexpot—with her teased hair, tight skirts, and Bond-girl eye make-up—might spice the film up a bit. Instead, she’s about as sexy as Magda, the old crone in There’s Something About Mary. Efron plays the pretty boy, but he’s so serious the whole film that it sucks all the life out of everything. McConaghey is the only one who brings any vitality to the proceedings, and it seems like the script is dismissing his character half the time in order to attend to something less interesting. I like the intent of the film, but this subject matter is crushed under the weight of the seriousness.

The Paperboy is a meaningless wreck of a picture. The narrative meanders, never seems to settle on anything substantial, and leaves you more interested in the disturbing, pulpy moments than it does in any resonant themes. 

Drugs are Bad ... Really Bad -- Reflections on EVIL DEAD (2013)

This is what happens when you shoot heroin, kids.

Evil Dead – the remake of Sam Raimi’s 80s horror classic – is essentially an ABC’s After-School Special with a large budget spent mainly on gore. The film is a 90-minute metaphor for the horrors of drug addiction, as if you didn’t already know that drugs – especially really hardcore illicit drugs, like heroin – were bad for you. It does this in a mostly entertaining, non-offensive way, but being mostly entertaining and non-offensive isn’t all that interesting. To be the Evil Dead, it needs to be extremely entertaining, and extremely offensive. Pat and padded morals just don’t do the trick.

This update of the horror franchise returns to the cabin in the woods (which looked like the same cabin used in last year’s masterful film of the same name), but this time we don’t get anyone nearly as charismatic as Bruce Campbell to follow into the mayhem. Who we get instead is David (Shiloh Fernandez), a grease monkey trying to reconnect and help his heroin-addicted sister, Mia (Jane Levy), spend the next few days detoxing away from all drugs and society. With them are David and Mia’s old, estranged crew, Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci) and Olivia (Jessica Lucas), and David’s personality deprived girlfriend. No one is particularly interesting; they are all dour types, except maybe Mia, who at least gets to act crazy.

Eventually, the movie follows beats from the original. The kids find a strange book covered in stitched human skin, say the forbidden magic words because they can’t help themselves, and eventually begin to go through the stages of demon possession. Mia is affected first, but since she is a junkie, everyone assumes she is tripping balls. They’re wrong, of course, and before you know it people are talking in echo-y voices, sporting horrible skin ulcers, and mutilating themselves. There’s not much else to the movie, but there wasn’t much to the original, either.

Except the original Evil Dead had a sense of humor. The first Evil Dead was definitely a more serious entry in the series, especially compared to the campy Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness, but it had Bruce Campbell’s funny reactions, some clever dialogue and demonic repartee, and the novelty of being original. This new film comes at a time in the history of the horror genre in which audiences have seen most everything filmmakers have to offer in the scare department. Cabin in the Woods made that abundantly clear. So, without much in the originality department, the movie relies on the laziest of horror movie conventions…gore. And in that department, it delivers. This is the goriest horror movie I’ve seen since Peter Jackson’s Brain Dead. Blood practically spurts out of every shot, and it’s all done through some exceptionally well-crafted practical effects. If there is any CGI blood in this movie, you can photoshop me into a meme and mutilate me.

But lots of blood does not a great film make, otherwise we’d call Hostel a masterpiece. Evil Dead gets a lot of mileage out of its gory scares, especially the tongue splitting and arm cutting scenes, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that it offers little more than the drug addiction metaphor. Drugs make us demons, the movie shouts, and as those demons we destroy our friends, family, and eventually ourselves. I’d say it’s as deep as a puddle of blood, but in this movie that’d be pretty deep indeed.

Talking Points -- Mama (2013)

Get ready for the boom, kid! You know it's coming...

All the elements are there: an isolated cabin, creepy kids, an “imaginary” friend, naïve adults, an obsessive psychiatrist, a foreign house. As I watched Mama, I couldn’t help but have a been-there-done-that feeling in my stomach. Nothing the movie does really surprises, challenges, or invites hyperbole. But, sometimes it’s not about the elements, but about their execution. What Mama does well is put all the pieces together with terrific sincerity and craft.

This is not to say that I want to revisit this film again, or that it will do more than get a “ho-hum” out of me when it is released on Blu-ray in six months. It’s a standard, run of the mill horror film, with a clever story, a terrific performance from Jessica Chastain, but is bogged down by some recent horror movie clichés and a lame ending.

Talking Point #1: Compelling story, lame ending

Mama begins five years ago. Jeffrey (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) has lost his mind. He kills his estranged wife, then rushes home to abduct his two girls and takes them on a trip into the mountains where he intends to kill them and himself at an isolated cabin in the woods. Unfortunately for Jeffrey, cabins in the woods are often not what they seem, and his efforts are for naught. Time passes, and Jeffrey’s twin brother, Lucas, is still searching for his nieces even though he doesn’t make enough money as an artist to cover the checks he writes to the two hillbillies he has hired to conduct the search. Fortunately, the searchers find the cabin and the girls (Megan Charpentier and Isabelle Nelisse), who have managed to survive on bugs, worms, and a massive amount of cherries, but have become feral, and uncommunicative. Lucas manages to make a deal with the ambitious Dr. Dreyfuss (Daniel Kash) to gain custody of the girls as long as he moves into a house specifically owned by the county for case studies. Lucas heartily agrees, and his punk rock girlfriend Annabelle (Jessica Chastain) reluctantly chooses to tag along out of love and obligation.

Of course, things are not what they seem with these girls. They claim to have been raised in the woods by a person called “Mama,” who Dr. Dreyfuss believes is a manifestation of a dissociative personality disorder in the oldest girl, Victoria. He’s wrong, but you already knew that from the trailers. The plot takes the requisite twists and turns as it propels to its finale. I imagine, if you’ve seen a lot of horror movies, that you can already see where the story is going – from Annabelle’s rise from anti-mother type to full-fledged protector to the complex and looney tunes back story of the monster. It’s not hard to figure the movie out, but that’s not that big a deal.

What is a big deal is the ending, which is underwhelming and is ultimately confusing. After the movie, my girlfriend went online to look up a couple pieces of information concerning the connection between Lily, the younger girl, and Mama, and what she discovered was never revealed in the script. If it was, I missed it, but that didn’t change the fact that I felt the ending copped out in how it dealt with the resolution of Mama’s ghostly struggle, and our protagonist’s handling of it. In addition, there were some loose ends, like the Dreyfuss’ trip to the cabin, and a subplot involving the girls’ meddling aunt that were left exposed in unsatisfying ways.

Fortunately for Mama, the movie’s success does not hinge on its ending. It’s merely a letdown. And while the plot is conventional, the movie has other things going for it that keep it from becoming as awful as Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark a couple years ago.

Talking Point #2: I am now drinking the Jessica Chastain Kool-Aid.

I recently read a critic who called Jessica Chastain this generation’s Meryl Streep. After looking at her body of work, there is no denying the validity of the claim. The woman picks terrific roles, and even in a B-movie like Mama, she elevates the material with her mere presence. Annabelle could have come across as a grating punk rock chick, but with Chastain in the role, she is embodied as a complete human being: reluctant to be a mother, yet nurturing and thoughtful, while still edgy and uncertain in her own abilities. As Annabelle goes through her obvious arc from punk rocker who celebrates a negative pregnancy test to full-fledged mother who would die for her kids, it never feels forced or untrue.

The trick is in the details. Chastain’s body language starts so standoffish and tense, like the strings of the bass guitar she plays, but as the story unfolds, her body language loosens and softens as it relates to the curious girls she’s been forced to raise. Her punk rock defiance rears its head at interesting moments as she interacts with outside characters, like the girls’ opportunistic aunt. And her costuming changes as the movie nears its climax are subtle and reflective of the woman she sees herself becoming. For a B-movie, this is a strong performance, which puts Chastain at the head of the class when ranking this current generation of film actresses.

Talking Point #3: Yo, sound mixers! Can’t you find a better way to shock and awe?

I’m seriously tired of the “boom” cliché. You know the one I’m talking about. It’s when the camera cuts to a scary image – usually an attacker emerging from the background, or a point-of-view shot from the victim’s perspective – and the soundtrack issues an escalating hum climaxing with a “BOOM!” Honestly, I don’t know when or how this convention got started, but it has become so prevalent in horror movies over the last decade – especially the more bloodless PG-13 ones – that I find myself taken out of every startling moment.

My biggest complaint here is that the soundtrack is substituted for a real scare. Directors are also in love with smash cuts of scary images, too, as if jumping in your seat is the same thing as being scared. It’s a roller coaster mentality that gets real old, real fast, and after awhile becomes a crutch for lesser filmmakers. Real terror is established through context and connection with characters, not through editing (sound and visual) gimmicks.

Now, while Mama is a pretty egregious violator with this, it does have a few chilling moments. My favorite occurs early in the film, in which Jessica Chastain’s character, Annabelle, is coming up the stairs of their house to put away laundry. We get a terrific jolt of dramatic irony when we see in the corner of the shot one of the little girls playing tug of war, we assume with her sister – that is until the sister appears in the shot behind Annabelle. Very creepy.

Straightforward, sincere, and occasionally scary, Mama is a solid horror movie. It’s good for a night out, but not much more.

Talking Points: Les Miserables (2012)

I have a hit-or-miss relationship with musicals. The movie musicals I love – Singin’ in the Rain, Meet Me in St. Louis, West Side Story – are older, made during Hollywood’s golden studio era, made when our society needed the escapist properties of Busby Berkeley, Fred Astaire, and Gene Kelly. There are many musicals in the last couple decades that have done much for me. Chicago grated on my nerves. Dreamgirls made me yawn. And movies like Burlesque and Mama Mia! gave me insane gastrointestinal problems. The only musicals I can honestly say I liked in recent memory are Sweeney Todd and Moulin Rouge, and that was more for the directorial flair than anything else.

Broadway has had even less of a hold on me. I saw my first Broadway production of The Phantom of the Opera back when I was 12, on a school field trip. It starred Michael Crawford as the Phantom and Sarah Brightman as Christine. I loved the experience, the emotion, the mystery, and most importantly, the songs; it is still my favorite stage musical. Although, I imagine if I was able to score tickets to The Book of Mormon, I would no doubt find a replacement (I have listened to the soundtrack a score of times, and adore it more than most albums from my favorite musicians).

All this to say that I was never struck by the Les Miserables fever that took hold in the early 90s when I remember the play breaking big nationwide. One of my good friends used to listen constantly to the London Cast recording on CD and singing the songs nonstop for a few weeks. I always thought it was sort of nutty and never took the time to explore the musical more. And the tunes I heard didn’t do much for me.

So, when I heard that Tom Hooper was planning on doing a full scale adaptation of the Broadway musical on the big screen, it didn’t mean much to me. The only thing that piqued my interest was his intention to have the actors sing live on set and use those performances as the soundtrack as opposed to traditional methods of recording the songs before the start of production. I liked the idea of the rawness of live performances, even if it meant that the actor wasn’t a skilled vocalist. Perhaps it would bring out a stronger emotion of which lip syncing just isn’t capable.

This turned out to be both true and false. Les Miserables is definitely a hit-and-miss movie. It has a couple strong performances, a few strong sequences, several awful performances, and a director who doesn’t know how to stay out of his own way. Here are some things to think about:

Talking Point #1: Who is this movie being made for?

Since I’m not the world’s biggest musical fan, nor a hater by any stretch, I thought I was the ideal audience for a movie like this. If it was good, I’d be won over; if not…I’d write a scathing review. Well, as I sat through the first half of the film, considering taking a bathroom break, I realized that this movie was being made for Les Miz fans, and Les Miz fans only. This was confirmed after the film, when I was driving home with my friend, Steph, who is an unabashed fan of the musical, and she kept explaining things I was calling into question by bringing up her past experience with seeing it on stage and reading Victor Hugo’s novel. This doesn’t mean that she loved the movie either – she didn’t – but it quickly made it clear to me that if you’re not in the Les Miz club before seeing this film, you probably won’t be lining up to join after seeing it.

Talking Point #2: Jury is out on live singing in movies

Let me get it out of the way since pretty much every critic has already said it, the Golden Globes are getting ready to award it, and an Oscar nomination is already predestined: Anne Hathaway is fantastic. She is by far the best performer in the film, and she also has the pleasure of singing the film’s best song, “I Dreamed a Dream.” She plays Fantine, a down-on-her-luck single mother sending back every franc she can earn to the scoundrel innkeepers taking care of her daughter, Cosette. Fantine’s story is tragic, and as she falls from grace, both myself and the film were fully engaged. Hathaway’s commitment to the character, and the way the anguish in her face comes across on the screen, is astounding. Unfortunately, the film never recovers from this. Once her character is gone from the story, it really sputters along.

But Hugh Jackman and especially Russell Crowe are not very good. Jackman’s voice is strong enough – although it warbles like a record on a wobbly player – but he has this nagging habit of breaking every melody and whispering, or talking the rest of the lyric. I get the need to make it a performance, to make it seem more “realistic”(as if you can use that word in context of a movie musical), but every time he does this, it took me out of the story, and kept me from appreciating the songbook, which is sort of the purpose of musicals, right? Crowe, though, is wretched. Half the time he is out of tune, it seems, and his voice does not match anyone’s. When he’d show up on screen, I had to hold back a groan, and felt like a parent at a school play, just hoping their kid won’t screw up, and looking around to see other’s reactions as they do.

The rest of the cast is competent, although Eddie Redmayne sort of sounds like Kermit the Frog when he sings. I rather enjoyed the sequences involving the French Revolution guys. They are spirited, feisty, and most importantly, sound good.

Talking Point #3: Making connections

The basic story of Les Miserables is a classic. Jean Valjean (Jackman) is released from prison on parole after serving 19 years for stealing a piece of bread to feed his starving niece, and he winds up finding a new identity and life as a generous, philanthropist factory owner. His world collapses when he runs into Javert (Crowe), the legalistic military officer who doesn’t believe a man can change his stripes. Eventually, Valjean manages to rescue the prostitute Fantine (Hathaway) from the clutches of Javert, and before she dies he promises to take care of her daughter, Cosette (Amanda Seyfried). This decision puts him at risk of capture by Javert, but also provides him with the family and love that he had thought he’d lost. Eventually, Cosette falls in love with a revolutionary named Marius (Redmayne) and Valjean’s path crosses with the fight of the people against the government that has persecuted them all.

This is a powerful story, and Valjean is an amazing character. He is the symbol of the common man, struggling to get out from under the persecution of unfair powers of government and society; but it is his triumph, and the power of love that prevail. Seriously, this doesn’t seem like a hard story to screw up. It’s got great irony, colorful characters, terrific twists, and a dominant theme. Yet, director Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech) does mess it up. Royally.

First, despite Jackman’s best efforts, Hooper overuses his extreme close-ups, wide angle lenses, and sweeping crane shots to the point where we are more focused on the technique than the character. Sidney Lumet said that style should service story, and called anyone who did otherwise a “decorator.” In his book, Making Movies, he said it’s not hard to recognize who the decorators are. Tom Hooper is, indeed, a decorator. The mise-en-scene and cinematography are beautiful, but they seem to be disconnected from the story being told at times. Every character is so closely framed when they sing that it’s hard to place them in time and space. If there is such a thing as overacting, there is such a thing as overdirecting, and Hooper does that here. The result is a loss of connection with those terrific characters and remarkable material. Is this evidence that an Oscar goes to a director’s head?

So, Les Miserables is a disappointing film. This coming from a guy who appreciates a great musical, but needs more than just a couple good songs and the pull of a few heartstrings before he starts singing along.

Talking Points: The Impossible (2012)

Tragedy can strike anytime, anywhere, without warning. Of course that’s obvious, but it’s one of life’s immutable truths that we can’t seem to get our heads around, no matter how keenly we understand it. The Impossible is a film about the cataclysmic tsunami that hit Thailand in 2004. The earthquake which caused the tsunami was the third highest registered earthquake ever on the Richter scale, coming in at around 9.1. Waves reached as high as 30 meters in some of the affected regions, which is roughly 100 feet. The effects of the earthquake and resulting tsunami resonated globally, causing the entire planet to shake. It destroyed buildings, cities, families, lives. It is reported that 230,000 people lost their lives.

To tell this story in a traditional narrative had to be an overwhelming task, not just because of the scale of the disaster, but because of the long list of disaster films that have preceded it. Most, though, were merely excuses for spectacle at the expense of revealing the underpinnings of emotion, like Earthquake (1974) or The Perfect Storm (2000). The most recent film to tackle a tsunami was Clint Eastwood’s spiritual drama Hereafter (2010).

The Impossible does what many films in its genre have failed to do, and that’s bring the emotion. This is a highly-charged emotional film, from the electric performances of Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor, and newcomer Tom Holland, to the John William’s-esque musical score by Fernando Velasquez. I found myself tearing up several times throughout the film. After the fact, though, I wondered how much of my emotion was tied to my personal feelings for my own children and the fear of losing them? Is this film too manipulative? There’s no doubt that it is an effective film, hits all the right buttons, and has a satisfying, happy resolution which will please most audiences. Yet, it leaves me with some questions and thoughts.

Talking Point #1: How well do we really know these characters?

Maria and Henry Belon are vacationing with their children over the Christmas holiday in Thailand. This is their first – and I imagine, last – visit to the beautiful, exotic country. Maria is a doctor, Henry seems like he has a job in real estate, but we learn that someone else has just been hired at his firm in a similar capacity, making him fear for his job. They have three children, Lucas, Thomas, and Simon. Maria has chosen to take a hiatus from her job as a doctor to raise their boys, but now that Henry’s job may be in jeopardy, she suggests that perhaps it is her turn to go back to work. We know that they are doting parents because they spend quality time swimming, dining, and setting off those awesome floating candles we see in nearly every movie set anywhere near India. This is all we learn about them before the tsunami strikes.

Is it enough to make them more than mere audience surrogates? After the tsunami hits, pretty much every character beat involves the obvious choices of crying over loss, misery, fear, and frantic searching. This is not to say that these are not real, or honest, but that I’m not sure there is much to separate these characters from any other characters who might find themselves in similar circumstances. The point of good characterization is to reveal true behaviors in the midst of conflict. There are two moments in the story in which I feel that a character shows something unusual.  

(I’m about to venture into spoiler territory here, so proceed with caution)

The first was when Maria decides, despite having a punctured mid-section and severely lacerated right leg, to help a screaming child. Lucas, the pragmatist, tries to sway her to focus on their own survival, but her Hippocratic oath compels her to help anyone she can regardless of the consequence to herself. This is a moving moment, and has considerable payoff later in the film.

The second moment is when Henry decides to send his youngest children, Thomas and Simon, off with another group of survivors so he can focus on finding his wife and oldest son. It was a decision that felt so strange, so insane, so real, that I was invested in the outcome.

Upon reflection, it seems they are solid characters. I wanted more from them earlier in the film, wanted to know more about them before they were defined by the disaster.

Talking Point #2: The disaster

A disaster film is only as good as the way it films the disaster at the center of its premise. J.A. Bayona, who also directed the remarkably good horror movie (also about an intrepid, persistent mother) The Orphanage, nails the disaster. Combining real life water effects and quality computer work, the tsunami hits the screen with power and horror. You can’t take your eyes away from the look, and his well employed crane shots often pull back to reveal the devastation left in the tsunami’s wake. I felt like I had taken a punch to the gut during the first wave, and as Maria and Lucas found themselves being carried in the wave, I feared for their lives.

This is terrific filmmaking, visceral and engaging. In those moments, I was being pushed along that wave, too. A lot of times when I watch movies, I find myself thinking my way through the story, but the disaster sequence made me stop thinking for a moment and get caught up in the chaos and confusion.

Talking Point #3: The race issue

J.A. Bayona has gone on record as saying that he intentionally did not state where Maria and Henry Belon were from so as to create an universal feel for the story. And the real Maria Belon, in an interview, said something similar, “This movie is not about nationalities, not about races, not about colors. It's about human beings. One of the conditions we put is that there should be no nationality for the family. I don't care if they would be black, brown or green skin. I wouldn't care about anything.”

That’s certainly a great sentiment, yet it’s hard to watch The Impossible and not be acutely aware that you are watching a story about beautiful white people, with beautiful white children, in which they are seeking and getting help from everyone around them. It’s hard not to be aware that the natives of Thailand, who were no doubt just as devastated as the white family, are placed in a background role in their own country. Whether the film intends it or not – and it most certainly does not – it almost seems to imply that traveling to foreign lands is not advisable for white families.

The question of making a story universal is an interesting one. How, exactly, can you make a story universal? My experience with storytelling is that the more specific the story, the more universal it winds up becoming. Specific details about characters, cultures, and societies often help us make connections to our own worlds and therefore create a universal sense. When I watched the Brazilian crime film City of God for the first time, I wasn’t alienated by the fact that the story was specific to Brazilian ghetto culture. No, I found myself caught up in a story of friendship, survival, and betrayal that grew in power the more specific the story became about the world in which the characters lived.

This is, then, my biggest complaint about The Impossible: that it seems whitewashed in traditional Hollywood values. The Belons are Spanish, so why couldn’t they be Spanish in the film? I’m not so naïve as to see that in order to make a film like this profitable, we need stars, and that Spanish language films don’t perform well outside of Spanish speaking markets. But it doesn’t change the fact that I feel weird about watching suffering white people.

The Impossible is still a strong, well-made film. I can’t imagine many people having the problems that I had with it, but they are issues that should be addressed and discussed. Is the film a universal one, in which we are allowed to fully invest ourselves in the painful struggle of a family to reunite in the face of an awful natural disaster, or is it disingenuous by sucking culture out of it and relegating the natives of Thailand to the background in a movie set in their homeland?

One thing is for sure, though, and that is the truth that the only place we can be certain when and where a disaster will strike is at the movies.