The Lost Weekend

(Originally published on the Examiner in October 2009, this review has been moved here in its entirety.)

Don Birnam (Ray Milland) is a writer - in theory - and an alcoholic - in indisputable fact. Coming off a bender, telling himself he's finally going to write that big novel, Don's itch to drink is palpable as his brother (Phillip Terry) helps him pack up for a restful long weekend in the country. Instead, drawn to booze with the stubbornness of a boomerang, Don ditches his brother and his long-suffering girlfriend (Jane Wymann) to gulp down several shots of whiskey at the local establishment. Don, who was uptight and irritable in the first scene, loosens up, waxes eloquent on the wonders of whiskey, and flirts with a sassy hooker who picks up johns in the bar. It's a clear and effective depiction of why drinking appeals to this insecure artist - and it will be the last such moment. Having presented the magical deliverance of the ennui-quenching rye, writer/director Billy Wilder and co-writer Charles Brackett proceed to display, in merciless detail, all the drawbacks of the addiction. Don becomes a kind of 40s Dante in reverse, descending from brief intoxicated Paradise, through a purgatorial search for satiation, and finally into the depths of DT Hell. Only his longtime lover can hope to rescue him from the depths of his own self-hatred, of which the hard drinking is both partial cause and persistent symptom.

Compulsively watchable, with its strong performances (especially from Milland, who manages to be both pleasingly theatrical and harrowingly natural), juicy dialogues and monologues, and its de facto structure. The use of a single weekend as a framework (although the filmmakers cheat a bit by using flashbacks) focuses the action and makes Don's decline from sobriety through every stage of drunkenness to suicidal withdrawal all the more effective. The Lost Weekend is a very good movie, but it isn't great - and it's one of those films which can be frustrating to watch at times, because you can sense greatness within its grasp. Though the flashbacks are effective in laying out Don's pathology and explaining his mysterious relationship to Helen (whose affection for him and patience with him initially seems unwarranted), one wishes a less artificial construct could have been found. The film is sharpest when it stays on its one-weekend timeline, and when it unfolds by keeping pace with its hero's descent. Even the flashback photography is not as precise and focused as the images of the "present" - as if Wilder and fantastic cinematographer John F. Seitz were aware that their explanatory history wasn't as strong as their demonstrative real-time. There's also an overemphasis on explaining the addiction, which is after all as much chemical as anything else, but one is tempted to forgive the frequent psychological self-analysis, as it's so artfully written.

The film was marked as "realist" at the time of its release, when it won an Oscar for Best Picture in 1945. However, "realism" is not the same as "reality" and part of the film's appeal lies in the friction between the pleasures of Hollywood style (despite its location shooting, the films falls safely within the framework of studio filmmaking) and the darkness of the subject matter. The classicism gives us an familiar frame within which to view the grim reality of alcoholism, and The Lost Weekend is all the more effective for it. Like many thematically ambitious films, it dates more than movies which may have seemed less "edgy" and "relevant" at the time - when it lectures, explains, or at times overdramatizes Don's drunkenness it can seem out of touch. Mostly, however, the movie is still stirring, evocative, and engaging. The bat in that infamous scene does look embarrassingly fake, but the set piece has a great, grisly finish which still sickens. An excellent movie, flawed but a classic.

(Incidentally, many will adjust the balance more in favor of the latter than the former - take Tony d'Ambra, curator of filmsnoir.net, with his marvellous and celebratory write-up on the movie; you should absolutely follow the link for a more in-depth view of the movie.)

The Lost Son of Havana

(Originally published on the Examiner in July 2009, this review has been moved here in its entirety.)

Thirty years after the chants of "Lou-eee, Lou-eee!" have faded from Fenway, six miles from the spot of a very important and long-awaited 1975 reunion, the National Amusements Showcase Cinemas in Revere screened The Lost Son of Havana in Theater 1 at 7:35 pm; one of four daily screenings for at least the remainder of the week (if it is not held over any longer). The name of the movie was left out of the "Now Playing" flyers adorning the lobby, and there weren't any placards emblazoned with large quotes from Entertainment Weekly or video installments running trailers in loops. When asked for a ticket to the film, one of the theater's employees warned, "You do know it's a documentary, right?" Apparently, this disclaimer was necessary: some customers have been complaining. No one complained on this particular night, though - the four other people in the near-empty theater seemed perfectly content with their choice of entertainment.

If you do know it's a documentary, and you don't mind, please go out and catch this moving and very enjoyable picture, which observes beloved Red Sox pitcher Luis Tiant's career, family life, and return trip to Cuba after 46 years in exile from the impoverished Communist island on which he was born and raised. Tiant's upright dignity is colored by a wry humor and pride, and also by a looming melancholy, and his charisma carries you along for the hour and forty-five minute running length. The filmmakers (director Jonathan Hock, backed by the Farrelly brothers, of all people) get out of their subject's way - the style is not flashy (though occasionally grainy film stock punctuates the video footage to represent Tiant's subjective impressions; it's a nice and subtle effect). The structure is the by now traditional call-and-response of the present (Tiant's visit to Cuba) and the past (his dogged up-and-down career in the majors); there is a narrator (the ever-dignified Chris Cooper) but he only steps in to introduce photos and footage from the 60s and 70s, tending to efface himself when the now elderly Tiant is onscreen.

Tiant is a man who has not had one athletic career, but several. First there are the years in Cuba, building up his skill, while his father - once a player in the American Negro leagues (the narration lyrically describes "seventeen summers on the backroads of America"), and a genuinely great one at that, considered by some a greater pitcher than Satchel Paige - hides in the bus roundabout across the street, watching his son play in the park despite his own disapproval of the boy's dreams. Then Tiant goes to the U.S. - and stays there when Cuba clamps down the door on ballplayers, insisting they either give up their dreams of a professional career and come home, or else abandon Cuba for a U.S. career. Tiant, with his parents' approval, chooses the latter path, and while this ensures all that is to come, to this day he seems to feel he must make excuses, and occasionally he voices mournful shame over what happened.

At any rate, success is by no means immediate. For a while he follows his father's path, playing across the Jim Crow South, and though civil rights breakthroughs were on the horizon, Tiant recalls the virulent racism of the time - another reminder that the trading-family-for-freedom narrative is not so simple as that. When he breaks in to the big leagues, he breaks in big time, pitching no-hitters, developing not one but two signature pitching styles, rising and falling between the majors and the minors, becoming a star, becoming a nobody, and becoming a star all over again...for those who are unfamiliar with the story, I will say no more, and let the movie work its magic on you. While many of Tiant's accomplishments would be at home in a feel-good sports flick, there are constant reminders that reality is messier: a powerful moment before the World Series followed by disappointment; ultimately, an inevitable fading from the scene despite comebacks; most importantly, a muted fatalism and sadness detected in Tiant's countenance.

All of this only makes the miracles that much more amazing, and the movie climaxes as Tiant's family life, the political relations of the U.S. and Cuba, and the baseball fortunes of the Red Sox converge in the autumn of '75, in a formulation that no fictional screenplay could get away with. Meanwhile, of course, the film cuts back to Tiant as a much older man, quietly surveying the baseball aficionados in Havana who, asked about the greatest Cuban exile ballplayer, come up with many other names before they remember his. His reunions and reconnections with old family and friends are emotional, but more in a quietly sad key than with a celebratory tone.

Early passages in the movie are informed by a firmly anti-Castro tone, a bit overbearing in Cooper's narration and in some of the bleak footage, but politics are neither the filmmakers' nor Tiant's concern; frustration and anger with the Castro regime's imprisonment of Cubans on their island (and in a decaying version of the past, a kind of national arrested development which foreigners seem to find romantic, but which many Cubans themselves appear frustrated by) give way to simple observation, with the emphasis on endurance and empathy, but in surprisingly uncloying ways. Repeatedly, the film eschews sentimentalism: though Tiant's family welcomes him with admiration and love, some old neighbors scold him with tears in their eyes for abandoning them - meanwhile, elderly aunts feebly remember the years lost and, in some sense, wasted, while younger cousins flat-out ask Tiant for money. Looking at their severely decayed surroundings, we do not wonder at it (and neither does he, providing the bills they require).

This is in keeping with the spirit of the man, whose determination is laced with regret, whose withheld feelings slip out from behind his reflective shades and can be glimpsed beneath his drooping gray mustache. In one scene, Tiant's narration informs us that he does not believe in an afterlife, even as the camera pans to a crucifix in his car; in this man's life, God exists to help one make it through, but there is no reward waiting on the other side. All that you have is what you make, what you've lost can never be regained, and yet one cannot linger over regrets for that very reason. That a few viewers have wandered out of the theater, apparently dismayed that they weren't seeing Transformers 2, is probably something Tiant could handle; he's been through much worse. The fact that his story is onscreen at all is triumph enough - and the experience is not to be missed.

The Leopard

(Originally published on the Examiner in August 2009, this review has been moved here in its entirety.)

If Italian films from the forties and fifties were dominated by a hard-bitten look at the present, with a transforming Italy moving from fascism and war through poverty and ruin to the cautious construction of a modern postwar world, then Italian cinema of the sixties can be seen as one long, mournful elegy for the lost past, in a variety of different keys. At the dawn of the decade, neorealism had already been relegated to the past, but that movement's overarching social critique and devotion to intense observation of daily life continued to inform works crafted by the best Italian directors. These qualities were put to work in a series of wildly different yet equally powerful films, which together paint a coherent picture of a nation caught in the whirlwind, its people having severed their roots once and for all, yet unable to establish connections to the new world being born around them.

Ermanno Olmi, in Il Posto, tracked an upwardly mobile member of the working class as he moved into a professional job, finding the financial security that his family lacked. Yet in order to gain tenuous ground in an uncertain future, he was leaving the familiarity of a more traditional world behind. The fiery Pier Paolo Pasolini's characters had far less opportunities, but were no less driven - often into self-destruction. In his Mamma Roma, it is not the world which is fluid and unstable, but the people in it, represented by the cut from the wild grieving of a heartbroken woman to the static cityscape out her window. Solid and implacable, the vista may mock her ferocious energy and ambition, may even defeat it, but such energy could not be negated - Italians were on the move, whether or not Italy itself was ready or open to such movement. (This sensation was also evoked earlier in the film, as an adolescent roamed through a hilly landscape dotted with looming stone monoliths, their weirdly erratic stability contrasted with his - and the camera's - restlessness. The tense, plangent classical score on the soundtrack echoed his own inner stirrings.)

Of course there was Michelangelo Antonioni, whose highly formalist portraits of alienation also juxtaposed humans to landscapes, though in this case they seemed to cower, uncertain in the face of looming reality. Not content to let these implications speak for themselves, the writer/director of L'Avventura stated his intention baldly and boldly: "And today a new man is being born, fraught with all the fears, terrors and stammerings that are associated with a period of gestation." Even the fantasist - and (hence?) most popular of the Italians - Federico Fellini - focused his two crucial early sixties works, La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2, on anxiety caught in the cross-hairs between past and present, desire and responsibility. Meanwhile a younger generation, even less situated in Italy's past than its elders, regarded the last holdovers of an old society with a mixture of bitterness and nostalgia. The bitter was best represented by Marco Bellochio with his scathing debut Fists in the Pocket - a brutally funny, and frightening, screed against the nuclear family in which the rebellious and murderous outbursts of our protagonist, initially seeming free-spirited, were eventually revealed as the self-realization of a fascist.

And then there's the nostalgia. Two directors, one very young, one middle-aged, looked longingly upon the trappings and conventions of civilized life, even as they ambivalently touted the revolution. Ironically, it was the younger of the two directors - Bernardo Bertolucci, who was about 23 when he shot Before the Revolution - who clings most fervently to the old ways. Bertolucci's hero, a young Communist, is unable to break his bonds to the comforts of the upper class and "the sweetness of life before the revolution." (Bertolucci is still exploring the tensions between his sensual, poetic sensibilities and his political radicalism - the recent film The Dreamers was a meditation on that very ambivalence.) The older director - Luchino Visconti - sees change as inevitable, but is just as ambivalent as Bertolucci about its desirability. Unlike the work of the younger sensual Marxist, Visconti's period picture The Leopard (based on the novel by Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa) is not set before the revolution, but after. Hence the world being mourned is experienced only in its dying gasp, like a life flashing before one's eyes at the moment of death.

It is worth noting that The Leopard does not open after the aristocratic ruling class of Sicily has fallen (to the unifying revolution of Garabaldi and, more importantly, the bourgeoisie). Instead it opens with the beginning of the end, albeit with a hint of the complete destruction that awaits its upper-class characters. The credits unfold over images of empty courtyards, seemingly abandoned towers displayed in their crumbling glory. We're not sure yet if we're in the nineteenth century or the twentieth; these shots could just as easily belong to a documentary about Sicilian landmarks as to a feature which takes place when those landmarks were still in use. Finally, as the titles end, the camera begins to move, and with its movement we are swept into the past: a pan along the exterior of an old mansion, accompanied by muffled Latin prayers and shouting in the distance, eventually reveals an open window through which we can see the Salina family kneeling for an informal Mass - only to be interrupted by a growing clamor outside: a dead soldier has been found in the courtyard.

Like the detached ear in Blue Velvet, the dead soldier represents an incursion of the strange and threatening into the enclosed, comfortable world of the protagonists; but the Salinas are already aware of what the soldier represents, and know that he is just the first drop in the bucket. Indeed, as they "celebrate" Mass with their affable yet comical and ineffective priest, they are all costumed entirely in black; while this is most likely their common Sabbath dress, the image undoubtedly calls to mind a funeral. Thus the very first time we see the family they are grieving for the loss, not of a specific person, but of their own way of life. Although Prince Don Fabrizio Salina (a justly celebrated Burt Lancaster, dubbed into Italian for this print) spends the entire film maneuvering to preserve his family's status, even as its actual power slips away, there is a sense that a line has been crossed and with time, the new Italy will completely shake off the privileges of the aristocracy. (When the Salinas are warmly welcomed to their secluded vacation home, they step out of the carriage covered head to toe in dust; as the camera pans over the family sitting in church all that redeems their ridiculous appearance - and the irrelevance it suggests - is their self-contained dignity.)

Some aristocrats are able to ride the wave of change into the heart of the new society - Tancredi Falconari (Alain Delon), the Prince's charismatic but entirely opportunistic young nephew, even fights alongside Garabaldi before joining the new state's army and marrying Angelica Sedara (Claudia Cardinale), the gorgeous daughter of the shrewd but gauche bourgeois official Don Calogero (Paolo Stoppa). On the surface, the Prince seems to be one of those malleable nobles, making public gestures toward the the nation-state, courteously suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous manners when entertaining the new elite, even setting up the marriage between Tancredi and Angelica (whom he seems to be a bit in love with himself; her dazzling looks and inadvertently awkward social skills perfectly embody the enticing yet rude new world of the bourgeoisie).

Yet despite all these gestures, the Prince knows that his time is running out. When offered a position in the Italian senate, he politely declines and offers a fatalistic viewpoint on Sicily, speculating that it is impervious to change, that its people will never warm up to progress even if it's in their best interests. His feelings do seem reflected by the harsh landscape and backward society around him, but it's also clear that the grim sentiments are more an expression of his own self-view than that of his people: he has accepted his own decline gracefully, even wistfully, and the final sequence - a grand ball which consumes the entire last act of the epic story - seems to show him recognizing, completely and directly, what it is he has lost.

Keep in mind that despite the movie's running time and grand sets, the film focuses mostly on scenes of dialogue, of customs and interactions, backroom deal-making and diplomatic maneuvers. There is one battle scene, which at times feels too orchestrated, and one of the conversations is held on a hillside overlooking the broad expanse of the Sicilian town, but for the most part the epic qualities are relegated to theme and character - and to the grandeur of the interiors - rather than to expensive set pieces or expansive narrative developments. The exception is that final ball, not only because a cast of tens of thousands pours into the ballroom and banquet, but because the Prince had made all the arrangements for the future and is now face-to-face with his irrelevance and mortality for the first time.

Something hangs in the air, barely articulated, yet it is felt deeply, and is displayed as the Prince dances a final dance with Angelica, as he sits alone in a room pondering the deathbed in a painting, and as he silently broods in the early dawn, disappearing into the shadows of a back alley, when several shots ring out. A small band of soldiers, who had deserted to rejoin Garabaldi's forces, have been executed - this is not yet their time; meanwhile the Prince's has already passed. And so the Prince himself disappears, dying a spiritual if not corporeal death, into a new world which also, in time, will come to pass (see those films set one hundred years later). Which reminds us that all of society exists in a state of impermanence and that, one day, the Prince's fate will be our own too - the only question is with how much dignity and stoicism one faces the cold dawn.

Ivan the Terrible

(Originally published on the Examiner in October 2009, this review has been moved here in its entirety.)

Over the course of two films, released fourteen years apart due to Soviet censorship, legendary director Sergei Eisenstein chronicles the infamous Russian tsar's ascension to and assertion of power. Ivan (Nikolai Cherkasov) begins as a handsome young prince, crowned at the opening of Part I while the corrupt nobles whisper conspiracies under his very nose. By the end of Part II, Ivan is a wizened, shrewd tyrant, foiling an assassination plot by using a simple-minded relative as bait. In between, he leads troops into battle, throws decadent parties, loses a wife to poison, and is betrayed repeatedly until his paranoia makes him wise beyond his years - and authoritarian beyond his foes' wildest expectations.

The film is a masterpiece - the above plot description guides the action, but the essence of the movie is in the extreme close-ups Eisenstein lavishes upon the bizarre faces of his players, the lavish yet cleverly designed set pieces (dinners with huge white, and later black, swan statues; a diplomatic detente in which the figures are placed on the checkered floor like chess-pieces), and the magnificent score contributed by Prokofiev. One should not expect a historically accurate recreation, a politically correct manifesto, nor even an especially straightforward narrative; to enjoy the movie one has to appreciate the campy effects Eisenstein employs and recognize that their campiness is not really unintentional. Even Ivan the Terrible seems in on the joke, half-flirting with an effeminate usurper just to get his way, wickedly grinning as he poses for Eisenstein's flamboyant camera. Part II is even better than Part I, if only because it further abandons the dutiful rollout of Ivan's rise to power for the immersion in his decadent, paranoid, baroque milieu.

Eisenstein had been one of the signature pioneers of Soviet silent film, when his films focused on the power of "montage" - rapidly cut sequences which often employed visual metaphors and rhyming images. Ivan the Terrible employs a wider variety of tricks, but the execution is still tight, controlled, and rhythmic - not in a cold fashion, but bursting with enthusiastic passion. As Stalin clamped his iron fist down on the Marxist state and narrowed the range of the arts, preferring drab socialist realism to inventive avant-garde agitprop, it was hard to see where Eisenstein fit in this totalitarian vision. He was freed up to create Alexander Nevsky, a heroic history film and his first collaboration with Prokofiev, in the late 30s. But the film's anti-German slant became a mark against it with Stalin's ever-shifting political line and it was a good five years before Eisenstein was cautiously given permission to proceed with Ivan, seen as a tribute to the latter-day despot. How times change! Suddenly ostentatious monarchism, nationalistic xenophobia, and subservience of the masses to the rule of one man were celebrated in the name of the Leninist revolution. Apparently, Stalin approved of Part I, was dismayed by Part II (whose release was delayed until after his death), and canceled Part III. Eisenstein's career was over, he died in captivity, and the Soviet cinema entered its deepest deep freeze, only to be alleviated with Joseph the Terrible's own demise. Today, some see Ivan the Terrible as a Stalinist apologia, while others find in it a subversive attack on the dictator. Perhaps both viewpoints are correct, which only adds to the attraction of this warped classic.

(500) Days of Summer

(Originally published on the Examiner in July 2009, this review has been moved here in its entirety.)

Punningly, the title is a winking reference to Tom Hansen’s (Joseph Gordon Levitt) girlfriend, rather ludicrously named Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel). Appropriately then - and look elsewhere if you don't want the ending spoiled - the film’s own seasonal mood is rather autumnal, focusing as it does on the decline and expiration of a “quirky” romance. The movie also anticipates and tacitly acknowledges the death of the very hip/quirky/indie aesthetic that its own contemporary success would seem to vindicate. Just as “indie” trendiness hits saturation point in the media, the movie whispers to anyone who’s listening that the show is over and the queen is dead – the movie is an allegory for its own demise (and that of its audience) and even more surprisingly, an apologia for such.

Only after seeing the film does this become clear; after all, the marketing campaign won’t tell you a thing about the story or the message – not even a high-concept hook to get you in theaters. Instead there are constant pictures of Zooey & Joseph making googly eyes at each other, Smiths-saturated TV spots, and self-conscious affectations in the titles and graphics (normally indulged in those ubiquitous crayon/pencil-drawn titles, here reserved for the songlike parenthesis around “500”).

In other words, the ads focus purely on “the look” and (500) Days of Summer comes to seem like nothing more than a culmination of the past decade’s “indie” development – a move away from actual independence (like Juno and Little Miss Sunshine, this film is thoroughly enmeshed in Hollywood casting and financing) towards signifiers of "indieness." All that remain for public consumption are the soundtrack, Zooey’s adorable hair ribbon, Joseph’s hip messenger bag and especially his big black headphones (admittedly a relief after those twerpy white earbuds) – all of which quirky outsiders-cum-insiders in the audience are supposed to identify and identify with.

But the movie is more intriguing, if ultimately unsuccessful, than its empty viral promotions would suggest – even contradictory of the adverts. One has to see the whole film through to arrive at this moment of truth, and one has to ignore the various flaws and shortcomings along the way to recognize what the movie is actually offering, but once discerned an at least grudging admiration emerges for the anti-romantic aspects of the story. The narrative flashes back and forth among the 500 days of Summer and Tom’s romance, during which it becomes clear that Tom is a romantic and Summer is non-committal, something she admits and he chooses to ignore. Ultimately, she dumps him and he comes to accept that their wispy, whimsical, and trendy “connection” existed almost exclusively in his own mind.

That the film is superficial, “sensitive” without any penetrating insight, and stylistically dressed up with no real place to go ultimately becomes a case of form imitating content (presumably unintentional, but compelling nonetheless): just like the couple it presents, the movie is flat and limp beneath its quirky, ethereal surface. That the actual film recognizes, condemns, and moves beyond the very scene its success is reliant upon is promising (if hypocritical); however, the film can’t capitalize on this maturity as it is too enmeshed in the quirky trappings it sets out to subvert, and its writing and style are too mediocre to truly deliver – either the “indie” goods or the subversion thereof.

This is in spite of some nice touches, like a party conducted in split-screen, the left side showing Tom’s supposedly reasonable explanations of a rapprochement with Summer, while the right displays the disappointing, and ultimately crushing, reality. However, even here the idea remains mostly on the page, as the actual execution does not notably expand on the above description. Contrast with Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (1977) – the obvious inspiration for the films’ beginning/end back-forth structure – in which clever ideas also become hilarious, and occasionally moving, scenes (think the subtitled conversation on the rooftop, or the split-screen analysis sessions).

Director Mark Webb has difficulty moving beyond the conceptual toward the textural; the film’s conceits remain just that. The structure does not reveal any telling juxtapositions in beginning and end (it merely exploits a few jarring contrasts within the same location); the set pieces begin with an idea (a musical number after Tom gets laid) but leave it there (TV commercials have done this sort of thing before, and more stylishly - even when the intention was anti-style). The filmmaking is not bad; it's just mediocre.

Meanwhile, the screenwriters (Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber) pile on half-delivered clichés ripped from earlier offbeat hits like The Royal Tenenbaums (a narrator who pops up haphazardly and offers a pale imitation of Alec Baldwin’s rich voiceover in the opening minutes of Wes Anderson’s classic) and Juno (a precocious girl-guru, in this case closer to six than sixteen). Elsewhere the screenplay indulges in the most tired cliches, worn-out parodies of parodies vis a vis European art cinema (a mime carrying a balloon, yet another spoof of The Seventh Seal) - where, ironically, many of this movie's own watered-down stylistic tics originated. The film seems genuinely uncomfortable with the offbeat vibe it initially cultivates.

Furthermore, but on that same note, the movie has a surprising but telling alternative to the strained and already half-square quirkiness of its characters (consistently placed in front of corporate logos culminating in a “playful” visit to Ikea, in a scene which is either not as subversive as it intends to be or more discordant than it knows). When Summer marries an offscreen beau and Tom combs his hair and puts on a suit, images speak louder than words: though she's supposedly found true love, and he's ostensibly pursuing his dream job as an architect, the visuals recall standard images of Hollywood success: glossy, upscale, any quirks finally slicked over. The movie can't imagine any other viable alternative to the (thankfully exposed) limitations of earnest quirkiness: genuine rebellion or even detachment from the expectations of the characters' generation and media image don't even enter the picture.

Still, connotations of selling out aside, the conclusion at least brings maturity to the film’s characters, a sense that they've outgrown the cutesy perpetual adolesence which Garden State, among others, wallows in (until the last twenty minutes of the film, Tom and Summer's looks and behavior have conformed to a junior high student’s conception of the young adult world). A scene at another couple’s wedding has a nice rueful and elegiac tone, and Deschanel strikes a rare moment of truth when reuniting with Tom on a park bench: a flicker in her expression suggests to the viewer that there may be a parallel film going on here, and a more interesting one at that - her side of the story, perhaps wiser and deeper than Tom’s. A brief clip of The Graduate comes off nicely though it inevitably makes one long for the earlier film. (500) Days' statement that Tom grossly misread the ending of the 1967 classic is just about the best bit of characterization in the movie, for better or worse.

In the end, despite its overall weakness, the movie lingers - there's something at work here, even if the film itself doesn't really work (audiences seem smitten with it, but it's hard to see how the infatuation withstands closer and more long-term scrutiny; again, parallels with the subject onhand). And one can’t fault (500) Days for acknowledging that Nick and Norah's playlist won't bring them together, nor will listening to the Shins change your life (in this case, it’s the Smiths, admittedly a better band but surprisingly under-used given the constant name-dropping). As the "indie" movement hits saturation point in the mainstream, (500) Days arrives, perhaps inadvertently, to bury rather than praise the milieu; to sound a death knell for a certain type of cultural artifact.

Even if (500) Days’ buzz inspires a cluster of knock-offs (sprouting up from Hollywood studios’ faux-indie arms like the multiple Zooeys in one of the film’s ads), we’ve clearly reached saturation point with this particular manifestation of the zeitgeist. Trendspotters must start to look elsewhere for the new and edgy – perhaps even something with real edge, necessary now that the bubble (which fostered quirk culture, along with other manifestations of the ostrich-head-in-the-sand Bush years) has burst.

Summer’s over; bring on the fall.

Chop Shop

(Originally published on the Examiner in October 2009, this review has been moved here in its entirety.)

Alejandro (Alejandro Polanco), a Queens urchin, lives and works amongst the junk heaps and stolen cars of the local chop shop - both a street-savvy preteen and a naive dreamer, he knows how to navigate this adult world yet innocently hopes to purchase a van and turn it into ice cream truck. His older sister (Isamar Gonzales) shows up one day and sticks around, spurring him on in his dreams - yet she also wounds him, when he discovers she's turning tricks to make ends meet.

An excellent little film, glowing with a surprisingly warm poetic touch. The performances, turned in by nonprofessionals, are uniformly engaging - though limited in technique, the actors nonetheless convey buried emotions as they shuttle between ambivalence (feeling overwhelmed by their conditions) and resolve (working incredibly hard, pursuing - fanciful? - goals). The boy's heartbreak on discovering his sister's secret is deeply affecting. Director Ramin Bahrani engages with his protagonist's lifestyle without condescending to them; he demonstrates how a barely-furnished hovel above a garage can become a vaguely comfortable home with the presence of a loved one or a resolution that one will take what one can get. The story, while loosely structured, moves forward through its eighty-five minutes, accumulating memorable details and privileged moments along the way, keeping us curious, allowing its characters to grow but not too much. Most of all, the photography captures the vitality of a location: this may not be the ideal home or workplace but Bahrani does not leer with mock horror; he shows us, as with that hovel, how the little boy fits into his landscape, the camera capturing the latent beauty much as we suspect the precocious adolescent does.

Neorealism, as a pseudo-documentary style following the lives of fictional, but realistic, poor people, first made its appearance sixty-five years ago in postwar Italy. Bahrani, a young American filmmaker, has taken up the torch amidst today's multiplex blockbusters and twee indie quirkfest (in which it's taken for granted that money is not a concern). This 2007 film is his follow-up to Man Push Cart, a highly praised but (to these eyes) overrated debut in which the pretty surfaces, contrived storylines, phony performances, and aggressively pronounced camerawork distracted from the heart of the story. Chop Shop feels much more naturalistic, and less uneasy about its own romanticism, which comes with the territory: Bahrani is obviously attracted to beauty, however slummed up, and to pretend otherwise would be dishonest. Here he does not try to disguise his penchant for street poetry, but rather integrates it with the hardscrabble life he conveys and the rhythms of the human society on hand. Roger Ebert has called him "the new great director." I would not go that far - his milieu still feels a little forced, his poetic touch slightly overbearing, a certain intensity still lacking - but he's certainly showing promise. His latest film, Goodbye Solo (unseen by me, but very highly praised by others) is now on Netflix.

My Brother is an Only Child

(Originally published on the Examiner in October 2009, this review has been moved here in its entirety.)

Two brothers: one, Accio (Elio Germano), a fascist, the other, Manrico (Riccardo Scamarcio), a communist. As the Netflix envelope tells us, they "remain close despite their opposing political views, but when they both fall for the same woman, the rift between them grows." Actually, the story is more complicated - and interesting - than that. Manrico's commitment to his cause is greater than Accio's; the latter is a right-winger by virtue of heady testosterone, lingering Catholic traditionalism, and blistering sexual frustration. Besides, about two-thirds of the way through the film, Accio is no longer a modern-day Mussolini wannabe, so the film's potentially glib hook is not in play anymore. Meanwhile, the woman, Francesca (Diane Fleri), remains Manrico's lover throughout; and Accio's attraction to her may actually bond the brothers closer rather than split them apart. The film spans fifteen years, though the siblings don't quite age accordingly, and the storyline offers a political progression to match the familial dissolution. In the end, My Brother is an Only Child is an entertaining and at times though-provoking movie, if not a terribly deep one.

At its best, the film is a wry, warm portrait of sibling rivalry, a kind of coming-of-age comedy shot through a prism of extremist ideologies. While its heart certainly seems set on Manrico's leftism, the movie humors Accio's fascist blustering, seeing the bumbling blackshirts of the 60s as inadvertent comedians rather than sinister hoodlums. Occasionally, a satirical slingshot is aimed at the radicals as well. Particularly amusing is the Beethoven concert, initially a moving tribute from young revolutionaries to a musical iconoclast. Quickly, though, it becomes a silly socialist singalong when "Ode to Joy" receives embarrassing new lyrics, by way of placards extolling the virtues of Mao, Lenin, and Stalin. Accio himself eventually joins "the movement" (he's astonished to find out he doesn't get a membership card) but his political insight is still outstripped by a headlong obsession with "action". Meanwhile Manrico heads for the thickets of radical terror - while the name "Red Brigades" is never evoked, it seems clear that the once idealist worker has descended into Italy's version of the Weather Underground and Baader-Meinhof Gang. At film's end, only Accio seems to have a clear idea of how to make the struggle real, fusing political activism and family commitment in one impulsive, yet surprisingly intelligent, action.

The political history of 60s and 70s Italy is painted with a rather broad brush. One does miss a deep understanding of the Communist Party's relationship to radical activism (the film paints the two as glove and hand, respectively, when in fact their interests did not coincide until well into the 70s), as well as the actual role fascist recidivists played in state repression (indeed, the state hardly registers, save for the climax and a brief aside leading up to it - in this film, the political is very, very personal). At times, with the brothers representing differing ideologies, and with most of the action focused through the backwater Mussolini-built town of Latina, the movie takes on the quality of a fable, so it seems appropriate that the politics are simplified and streamlined. Besides, how much intricate ideological parsing can an audience take? Even so the era is evoked with some sharp flourishes; for example, the TV flashes images of 1968's international revolution, while Accio sits down in front of a hot plate and informs us, via narration, "The revolution never came to Latina. I think I spent most of that year in the kitchen."

The relationship between the brothers plays with goofy charm and warmth. You end up liking both of them - Accio, despite his political idiocy, and Manrico, despite his callous self-centeredness (he coasts on his charisma to bed women and then leave them hanging; ultimately, it's his own family he leaves hanging). Germano, as Accio, is magnetic with his enigmatic smiles and self-effacing jokiness, though occasionally, he tries a bit too hard to echo Robert De Niro (the two even look a bit alike). Ricardo Scamarcio is not quite as intriguing, but he's just as good as he needs to be for the part. Taking what could be a thankless Che Guevera pin-up rad doll and infusing him with humanity and genuine charisma, we can see why the youthful activists and old mamas of the village alike fall under Manrico's spell. Meanwhile, Diane Fleri embodies Francesca with such engaging warmth that we can sense immediately how both Manrico and Accio could fall for this pretty young activist in their own way; her bright smile outshines any red star or Mussolini medallion. One scene, in which Accio bids her farewell with a playful fascist salute and she returns the gesture with a grin and a mock fist of solidarity, rather nicely evokes the humanist way in which the film attempts to transcend political boundaries.

It's a Gift

(Originally published on the Examiner in October 2009, this review has been moved here in its entirety.)

W.C. Fields plays Harold Bissonette (pronounced "Bis-o-nay" at his pretentious wife's behest), a henpecked husband and besieged shop owner who's also a man with a dream. When his uncle dies and leaves him a bit of money, Mr. Bizonet, er...Mr. Bis-o-nay doggedly ignores his wife's blistering putdowns and admonishments, and buys an orange grove in California. The family sets off for the promised land in their old jalopy, wreaking havoc along the way; needless to say, when they arrive at their destination it isn't exactly Solla Sollew. But there's one more surprise awaiting them; in the end, Harold will have oranges aplenty, all the better to add a touch of flavor to his tall glasses of gin.

The above describes the plot, all right, but if it conveys a humorous situation comedy in which the gags all arise from the premise, then I've given the wrong impression. One's sense of It's a Gift will be determined in the early scene when Fields attempts to shave. His teenage daughter charges into the bathroom and commandeers the mirror. W.C. bumbles around the room trying to determine a new way to cut his whiskers, but the humor arises not so much from his solutions, which are nonetheless amusing, as from the man himself. I watched for a minute or two and found myself thinking, "This isn't really very funny." Then, unexpectedly, I began to chuckle. And the mirth quickly became bountiful: Fields is so offbeat, so singular in his timing and expressiveness, that he's hysterical. He never seems to be milking a gag for laughs: he's like the juggler who keeps several balls in the air while drinking a glass of milk (spiked in this case) and talking to a friend - the comedy is simply effortless and natural. The constant assaults of the outside world - the family first and foremost - are never-ending, and the humor is to be found in Fields' flailing endeavors to find off these assaults, particularly the incessant verbal volleys of his withering wife. All of which can only be truly appreciated by watching the man in action, and as such, It's a Gift comes highly recommended.

It's a Gift is also wonderful for how it situates Fields' wild, desperate humor in the context of Depression realities, from the hardscrabble Jersey town where Bissonette raises a family, works, and suffers (all the same, really) to the Californian Eden of parched orange groves and sequestered mansions. In the end, Fields is a man who's achieved the American Dream in true individualist style: by being his own cantankerous, ever-enduring, ever-soused self.

Mutual Appreciation

(Originally published on the Examiner in October 2009, this review has been moved here in its entirety.)

Wannabe rock star Allan (Justin Rice) shows up in New York to pursue his career, experience city life, and hang out with his friends Lawrence (writer/director Andrew Bujalski) and Ellie (Rachel Clift) - Lawrence's girlfriend, whose feelings for Allan may give the movie its sly title. As Allan and Ellie skirt closer to the edge of a sexual and emotional engagement, they realize they're playing with fire - without care, their happy trio could quickly go up in smoke.

As with all of the talented Bujalski's films, a plot description does not fully convey the movie's appeal. Actually, Mutual Appreciation is one of the best films of the decade. The attraction lies not so much in the story, which gives the fleeting moments and prevailing mood a context and a destination (though as always, a climax is present without a full-on resolution), as in the texture of the film. The beautiful, grainy black-and-white 16mm film look suffuses the proceedings with a melancholy, romantic atmosphere. Bujalski elicits charismatically naturalistic performances from his entire cast, and the improvised feel of the exchanges (though they are, in fact, hardly improvised) deepens the relaxed sensation of being immersed in an authentic universe which the filmmaker, like a Deist God, set in motion and then left to spin of its own accord.

Mutual Appreciation's rock musician hero and hip Brooklyn setting (touristy exteriors are eschewed for just-as-evocative apartment rooms and occasional basement clubs) are double-edged swords. They create a buzz and excitement around the film which can draw viewers in (Bujalski's first film took place in a more grungy post-college setting; his third in a workaday, more practical thirtysomething milieu). However, these elements also allow some to smugly deride the film as trendy or "hipster" and thus dismiss it. In fact, Bujalski's prevailing mood is a warm engagement with life, limned with melancholy; he eschews arch, ironic distancing for exposure of the raw feelings which race beneath young people's social interactions. He even has the guts to show the discomforting parasitism which underlies the musician's free-wheeling life, as he stumblingly phones his dad for money and endures a lecture about finding a job. Bujalski's first films spawned a movement jokingly dubbed "mumblecore" (these films can be intriguing but remain mere snapshot details of Bujalski's larger, richer canvas). Most other filmmakers of this milieu would have you believe that their characters survive on unconvincing half-baked "cool" jobs or some nebulous notion of financial independence. (This honesty manifests itself in different ways in different Bujalski films: in Funny Ha Ha, the character struggles through dreadful-looking temp jobs while Beeswax gives its characters relatively un-hip professions like lawyer and store manager). Anyway, after Bujalski kicked off an under-the-radar movement (of which most filmgoers remain blissfully unaware), he lay low for a while, appearing in a few of his peers' films but apparently waiting until the buzz blew over and he could go back to making his own unique, inimitable movies without being pigeonholed.

8 1/2

(Originally published on the Examiner in October 2009, this review has been moved here in its entirety.)

Guido (Marcello Mastrioanni) is a filmmaker. Suffering from director's block as his big-budget shoot draws nearer, Guido finds himself tossing and turning between baroque fantasies, an even more carnivalesque reality, and childhood memories both soothing and haunting. Serving as guide on the artist's quest for inspiration is the fleeting image of a beautiful muse (Claudia Cardinale); she appears every now and then like a splash of cool water - all too briefly. Then Gudio is submerged once again in the sweltering sauna of questioning producers, condescending writers, boorish acolytes, tormenting cardinals, preening mistresses, hectoring wives... The concluding image, which captures the film's wild characters marching around a circus ring with the director as the ringleader, nicely sums up the spectacular nature of the movie. The opening images (and sounds) - with the director trapped in his car, barely able to breathe, before floating in the sky like a balloon, with a mysterious figure tugging on a rope attached to his leg - also set the tone, establishing the artist's alternating claustrophobia and free-floating imagination, while preparing us for a film which will be told, most often, viscerally rather than narratively.

8 1/2 is widely regarded as Federico Fellini's masterpiece, yet however one judges it against the Italian director's body of work, it's an essential movie. Usually placed alongside classics like Citizen Kane, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and The Godfather in lists of the greatest films ever made, 8 1/2 has had an immense impact on popular culture since the 60s, furthering the idea of free-associational storytelling, glorifying the artist's humorous explorations of his own hang-ups, privileging the power of imagery and style over devotion to exposition and objectivity. None of this was new, of course, and even that which was relatively new already had already found expression in the vibrant New Wave films pouring forth from France. Nonetheless, 8 1/2 was one of those films which consolidated innovations and gave expression to the zeitgeist in a particularly memorable way. As such, its influence was carried on through all the envelope-pushing works of proceeding decades; today its idiosyncratic vision, devotion to individual consciousness, and modish style have perhaps found their latest home in the more innovative television series. This may say as much about the precarious nature of the filmic medium at present as it does about the eternal adaptability of "Felliniesque" flamboyance.

As for the marvelous movie itself, it remains sumptuous, romantic, entertaining. It is both timeless in its airy, imaginative, highly stylish approach, and charmingly of its time, as a portrait of early 60s chic on the cusp of mid 60s Pop bohemianism. The night scene, in which the director climbs the scaffold of his eerily empty outdoor set with his wife's lesbian gal pal, sharing his existential neuroses, perfectly summons a contemporary mood of melancholy dislocation. That feeling, for the moment confined largely to intellectuals and attributed variously to the Bomb and Sartre (both a bit old-hat by '63), would soon explode into the public consciousness, carried by the surging youth with their psychedelic drugs, hedonistic rock music, and apocalyptic politics. For the moment, at least, the seed of this mass mood was sprouting in a series of remarkably fresh and adventurous movies bursting forth from Europe, 8 1/2 being but one of the most notable. Personally, I find several Fellini films I connect more deeply with - beginning with his coming-of-age (somewhat after the fact) I Vitelloni and ending with that aching elegy to the good life and cynically cool celebration of the "sweet life," La Dolce Vita. However, there's no doubt that 8 1/2 is a summit in Fellini's cinema, and in the history of movies: there's nothing else quite like it.

Ludwig

(Originally published on the Examiner in August 2009, this review has been moved here in its entirety.)

Seen in the light of of the lugubrious Death of Venice, the impressive but stoic Leopard, and the emotionally devastating Rocco and His Brothers, the decadence and historical pageantry of Ludwig can seem almost refreshing. True, it has its psychological intensity, what with the physical and mental decline undergone by its hero (a deeply romantic, and possibly insane, Bavarian royal of the 19th century, whose reign saw his little kingdom swallowed up by the new Prussian-led German state). And at four hours long, it's hardly a sprightly jog through the park. Yet the film is lush, lavish, and entertaining - its long runtime absorbing due to the hero's wildness (he represents all the opposite tendencies of the aristocracy when compared to the melancholy, savvy, and dignified Burt Lancaster in The Leopard: self-indulgence, withdrawal into fantasy, irresponsibility).

Not everyone seems to feel this way, and the film was widely savaged on its initial release in 1972. Actually, this may be the rare case in which the longer version of the film actually makes it move at a more enjoyable pace, simply because the viewer actually knows what's going on, with all the footage finally in place. Take Roger Ebert's perplexed description of the cut released in the 70s:

In a film filled with unresolved scenes, one stands out. Visconti shows Elizabeth of Austria arriving in her carriage at one of Ludwig's castles. She enters, walks upstairs, and stops at the threshold of an incredibly long, ornate hall. She waits there (first in medium shot, then in long shot) for what seems like a good minute. After a while, there is the off-screen cackle of maniacal laughter. Nothing else happens. Fade out; the scene, the visit and the occasion are never referred to again. I wonder if that was Ludwig laughing, or Visconti.

In the version screened at the Museum of Fine Arts last weekend, the scene was perfectly clear: Elizabeth (Ludwig's cousin and his platonic love) arrives at the castle; Ludwig, in his decomposed and debauched state, refuses to come out but invites her, through his servants, to stay until he's ready to greet her, perhaps days or weeks in the future; a distraught and perplexed Elizabeth promptly leaves the castle, realizing that her endearingly foolish friend has gone off the deep end. Actually, there's a kind of charm to the obliqueness of the scene Ebert describes, and it allows him to deliver a humorous line for his conclusion, but undoubtedly the lengthier version of the sequence makes more sense.

Indeed, despite the madness of its subject, Ludwig is one of the more accessible Viscontis screened in the MFA series. It was shown following the at times inscrutable Death in Venice, which takes Thomas Mann's intense novella, obscures and transforms many of its meanings, and stretches scenes out for mysterious purposes (one is often left with the lingering suspicion that Visconti is simply in love with his sets - how else to explain the long pans across the room which abandon both our intellectual hero and the pubescent object of his intense affection?). Despite Ebert's claim that "I thought Visconti had just about used up the possibility of penetrating stares in his last movie, 'Death in Venice' which contained nearly 15 minutes of them...[b]ut, no, his characters are staring all the more penetratingly in 'Ludwig'", the film is actually quite talky and hardly consumed by wordless effects.

The first half of the movie may even be too talky, and at times - despite its grand locations and lavish sets - it seems oddly stagey, like a well-produced TV movie. In the second half, as Ludwig puts aside all concerns of state and any last traces of interpersonal relationships (at least with his equals), the visuals take over and the movie becomes more "cinematic." Here there is no question that Visconti is in love with his sets, but such self-indulgent adoration suits the subject (and indeed, the "sets" are often the actual locations they are depicting: fairy-tale castles which Ludwig himself built). In more ways than one: Ludwig is played by Helmut Berger, the director's lover - Visconti's passionate gaze is fully on display here, once the king discovers why he didn't want to marry Elizabeth's pretty sister when he had the chance.

Also on display are Visconti's love for opera (the king was infamously a patron, and a badly used one at that, of Wagner, played here by the game Trevor Howard) and for depicting the decline of the aristocracy (it would be hard to pick a more extreme example than Ludwig, who begins in a palace as lord of the land, and winds up in cramped confines as a mental patient overseen by stuffed-shirt bourgeoisie). The movie ends abruptly - as soon as the king is discovered dead, the frame freezes and the credits flash over the image of his corpse - but while this might be a crucial flaw in a more ambitious film, ultimately Ludwig seems more like a pet project than an attempted masterpiece. The movie allows Visconti to play with his favorite toys without recourse to an exacting discipline. As such, Ludwig is not great but it is highly enjoyable.

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu

(Originally published on the Examiner in October 2009, this review has been moved here in its entirety.)

Around 10:00 at night, Domnul Lazarescu (Ion Fiscuteanu), a 63-year-old Romanian widower who likes to drink, is feeling a bit queasy. By 6:00 the next morning, he's lying on a gurney in a hospital room that looks more like a morgue - he's comatose and his head is being shaved in preparation for surgery. In between, Lazarescu is escorted from hospital to hospital, indifferent doctor to indifferent doctor, his only sympathetic companion the nurse who rides with him in the ambulance and becomes increasingly frustrated with the cold shoulder - or outright rudeness - they encounter on their journey through the night. None of this is giving much away - indeed, the title is more suggestive than the movie, as we don't actually see Mr. Lazarescu die (though it doesn't seem like it will be long by the end). Lazarescu is what Hitchcock would call a MacGuffin - a device to hook the audience so they'll stick around for the real point: an exposé of a shockingly careless and overcrowded Romanian medical system and, even more pointedly, a fascinating study of human nature and "professionalism" in action.

In a way, this is problematic. When we meet Lazarescu, he is slovenly, inarticulate, and pathetic. Still, he earns our sympathy simply by standing (or slumping) in front of director Cristi Puiu's camera and struggling to articulate his ills, to which his mildly friendly neighbors seem mostly indifferent. Yet as the film wears on, and old man Lazarescu becomes increasingly disheveled and sickly, he becomes less subject than object. By film's end, Puiu and we in the audience are almost as guilty of neglect and indifference as the various doctors who shuttle their patient off to the next unlucky medic. The nurse becomes our protagonist to a certain extent, suffering alongside Lazarescu and moving from scolding him to (ineffectively) scolding the practitioners who refuse him care (various excuses are used: he's an alcoholic and doesn't deserve treatment, he needs surgery and we can't do it here, the patient's still conscious - he's not - and thus has to sign a waiver, etc.). Even she is gone by the final moments.

The film could be bleak, but instead - perhaps because Puiu cheats by withdrawing us from Lazarescu's largely interior suffering - it is fascinating and times even comic. Puiu has described the movie as a "black comedy" and indeed, it is at times darkly humorous to see the gap between the doctors' cool assurance and their inability to save one man's life or even ease his pain. The film also holds the fascination of documentary - even the more authentic forms of reality television - as the shaky camera voyeuristically picks up on little details: the cute young doctor's assistant blushing and flirting with the slightly older doctor between bouts of curtly trying to dismiss Lazarescu, the brash young doctor (he looks about 19) who orders everyone around and fatalistically assesses Lazarescu's dim chances of surviving the night, the hushed tone in the receptionist's voice as she describes the end of all-night shift, while in the background, a vacuum drones monotonously, its tones oddly soothing. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu won prizes across the globe in 2005 and 2006, in film festivals and critics' societies. Curiously, despite the comic undertones existing subtly alongside the verité authenticity and grim hospital decor, the box declares this film "the most acclaimed comedy of the year" (emphasis mine). Now that's funny.

Drag Me to Hell

(Originally published on the Examiner in October 2009, this review has been moved here in its entirety.)

The pulp-fiction title provides one clue, the quite literal visual depiction of said title one more. And sure enough, Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell is to horror films what the spring's Taken was to action movies: a satisfying, straightforward, well-made example of its genre, smart enough not to take itself too seriously, but self-possessed enough to avoid smug camp. Such films become rarer and rarer as Hollywood finds itself torn between high-profile (though not necessarily highbrow) adaptations and lowest-common denominator schlock, usually with a self-consciously "ironic" edge. For relief, there's the occasional clever, high-concept movie, but pure genre films - which satisfy an itch, do so with great skill and craft, and don't feel it's necessary to saturate themselves in a jokey postmodernism - have largely fallen by the wayside in the 00s.

Yet one of Drag Me to Hell's virtues is that it feels so unpretentious: the concept is more or less summed up by the title (we begin with one unlucky victim literally being dragged down to hell; for the rest of the film our heroine will try to avoid the same fate), and the execution is an exercise in evoking good, solid, jumpy thrills. After the 1960s prologue in which a young Hispanic boy is sucked through the earth by demons, we settle on the initially mundane life of our protagonist, Christine Brown (Alison Lohman), a loan officer gunning for promotion, while trying to avoid insecurity in her relationship with hotshot academic Clay Dalton (Justin Long). Her well-ordered life spins out of control when she denies a demonic old gypsy woman an extension on her mortgage; furious that she will be losing her home, the hag attacks Christine in the office and then jumps her in the parking lot, initiating one of the scariest/funniest carjackings in recent memory. Christine quickly comes to realize that the gypsy has cursed her - in three days she will be going to hell unless she finds some way out of the curse. With the help of a psychic, her freaked-out boyfriend, and eventually a talking goat, she tries to do just that.

The plot is rather ridiculous, but rather than try to complexify or satirize their storyline, the writers (Raimi and his brother Ivan) just run with it. Although she won't be pleasing any real-life gypsies with this portrayal, Lorna Raver is suitably horrific as the old hag (at one point, her dentures dispensed, she gums her victims' chin with ferocious gusto). Raver's performance, both disturbing and darkly amusing, sets the tone for the movie: acknowledging the inherent campiness of the material, but quickly moving on to more important matters, like grossing us out and occasionally giving us the creeps. (The old lady is not terrifying so much as revolting, but in a very fun way.)

Raimi, who pioneered a new form of horror/comedy with his iconic Evil Dead trilogy, is certainly no genre naif. That he largely chooses to play it straight is a testament both to his faith in horror traditions and his confidence in his own ability to manipulate and entertain audiences. Or does he "play it straight"? That interpretation will be doubted by some, even by many. Scott Tobias in the AV Club, celebrating Drag Me to Hell as "junk film-making at its finest" claims that Raimi wants us "to nudge each other over the transcendent ridiculousness" of what we're seeing. And a writer on IMDb declares the film "a live action EC comic". Fair enough - but there's a goofy sincerity to the ridiculousness (which only makes it more ridiculous, and more enjoyable) - and a warmly rendered sense of nostalgia inherent the IMDb writer's analogy. Even while aware of its pulpiness, Drag Me to Hell doesn't make much of this aspect, a refreshing approach to irony in this day and age.

Ultimately, the film can be enjoyed equally by kids looking for a grotesque good time, by cinephiles appreciating a fine filmmaker's craftsmanship and classical storytelling (itself a rarity in today's twisty-turny, multistory narratives), and by those who dig the wacky nastiness of the set pieces and the often silly behavior of the characters (who nonetheless are played straight).

Fair warning, though: animal-lovers will not be so pleased, and may feel that the threatening statement of the title can't come soon enough for our sweet-faced heroine.

Echoes of Fitzgerald

Despite the picture, these are not selections from The Great Gatsby (which, upon recently re-reading, launched me on my present Fitzgerald kick) but from "My Lost City", an essay featured originally in The Crack-Up (1945), and which I read for the first time in the slim 1996 volume The Jazz Age. (I had originally planned to include the bittersweet valedictory "Echoes of the Jazz Age," which opens the collection and lent my post its name; but I realized all my favorite quotes were from the next piece in the book.)

When John Updike died last year, I noted how some actors, artists, and writers feel like their "ours" in ways others don't. No writer is more "mine" than Fitzgerald, whose prose is more intoxicating than any other I've read, and whose insights resonate so strongly with me that his pages make me feel like I've "some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if [I] were releated to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away." Or at least as if I'm in the presence of one such genius, one generous enough to pass that "romantic readiness" on to his readers.

Without further ado then, here are bits and pieces of this one extraordinarily fine reminiscence, one which will be perhaps especially evocative for those of us who lived, and perhaps failed, in New York, but universal enough to appeal to all citizens of the globe. Consider these breadcrumbs, leading you (return trip or otherwise) on to that gingerbread skyscraper upon whose ramparts innocence lets loose its last sigh...

"There was first the ferry boat moving softly from the Jersey shore at dawn - the moment crystalized into my first symbol of New York. Five years later when I was fifteen I went into the city from school to see Ina Claire in The Quaker Girl and Gertrude Bryan in Little Boy Blue. Confused by my hopeless and melancholy love for them both, I was unable to choose between them - so they blurred into one lovely entity, the girl. She was my second symbol of New York. The ferry boat stood for triumph, the girl for romance. In time I was to achieve some of both, but there was a third symbol that I have lost somewhere, and lost forever."

"But that night, in Bunny's apartment, life was mellow and safe, a finer distillation of all that I had come to love at Princeton. The gentle playing of an oboe mingled with city noises from the street outside, which penetrated into the room with difficulty through great barricades of books; only the crisp tearing open of invitations by one man was a discordant note. I had found a third symbol of New York and I began wondering about the rent of such apartments and casting about for the appropriate friends to share one with me.
Fat chance - for the next two years I had as much control over my own destiny as a convict over the cut of his clothes."

"And in a haze of anxiety and unhappiness I passed the four most impressionable months of my life.
New York had all the iridescence of the beginning of the world. The returning troops marched up Fifth Avenue and girls were instinctively drawn East and North toward them - this was the greatest nation and there was gala in the air. As I hovered ghost-like in the Plaza Red Room of a Saturday afternoon, or went to lush and liquid garden parties in the East Sixties or tippled with Princetonians in the Biltmore Bar I was haunted always by my other life - my drab room in the Bronx, my square foot of the subway, my fixation upon the day's letter from Alabama - would it come and what would it say? - my shabby suits, my poverty, and love."

"I wandered through the town of 127th Street, resenting its vibrant life; or else I bought cheap theatre seats at Gray's drugstore and tried to lose myself for a few hours in my old passion for Broadway. I was a failure - mediocre at advertising work and unable to get started as a writer. Hating the city, I got roaring, weeping drunk on my last penny and went home...
...Incalculable city. What ensued was only one of a thousand success stories of those gaudy days, but it plays a part in my own movie of New York."

"This is not an account of the city's changes but of the changes in this writer's feeling for he city. From the confusion of the year 1920 I remember riding on top of a taxicab along deserted Fifth Avenue on a hot Sunday night, and a luncheon in the cool Japanese gardens at the Ritz with the wistful Kay Laurel and George Jean Nathan, and writing all night again and again, and paying too much for minute apartments, and buying magnificent but broken-down cars."

"An afternoon alone in our 'apartment' eating olive sandwiches and drinking a quart of Bushmill's whiskey presented by Zoe Atkins, then out into the freshly bewitched city, through strange doors into strange apartments with intermittent swings along in taxis through the soft nights. At last we were one with New York, pulling it after us through every portal."

"And lastly from that period I remember riding in a taxi one afternoon between very tall buildings under a mauve and rosy sky; I began to bawl because I had everything I wanted and knew I would never be so happy again."

"It was too late - or too soon. For us the city was inevitably linked up with Bacchic diversions, mild or fantastic. We could organize ourselves only on our return to Long Island and not always there. We had no incentive to meet the city half way."

"It was three years before we saw New York again. As the ship glided up the river, the city burst thunderously upon us in the early dusk - the white glacier of lower New York swooping down like a strand of a bridge to rise into uptown New York, a miracle of foamy light suspended by the stars. A band started to play on deck, but the majesty of the city made the march trivial and tinkling. From that moment I knew that New York, however often I might leave it, was home."

"Whole sections of the city had grown rather poisonous, but invariably I found a moment of utter peace in riding south through Central Park at dark toward where the facade of 59th Street thrusts its lights through the trees. There again was my lost city, wrapped cool in its mystery and promise. But that detachment never last long - as the toiler must live in the city's belly, so I was compelled to live in its disordered mind."

"I once thought that there were no second acts in American lives, but there was certainly to be a second act to New York's boom days. We were somewhere in North Africa when we heard a dull distant crash which echoed to the farthest wastes of the desert.
'What was that?'
'Did you hear it?'
'It was nothing.'
'Do you think we ought to go home and see?'
'No - it was nothing.'
In the dark autumn of two years later we saw New York again. We passed through curiously polite customs agents, and then with bowed head and hat in hand I walked reverently through the echoing tomb. Among the ruins a few childish wraiths still played to keep up the pretense that they were alive, betraying by their feverish voices and hectic cheeks the thinness of the masquerade. Cocktail parties, a last hollow survival from the days of carnival, echoed to the plaints of the wounded: 'Shoot me, for the love of God, someone shoot me!', and the graons and wails of the dying: 'Did you see that United States Steel is down three more points?'"

"From the ruins, lonely and inexplicable as the sphinx, rose the Empire State Building and, just as it had been a tradition of mine to climb to the Plaza Roof to take leave of the beautiful city, extending as far as eyes could reach, so now I went to the roof of the last and most magnificent of towers. Then I understood - everything was explained: I had discovered the crowning error of the city, it's Pandora's box. Full of vaunting pride the New Yorker had climbed here and seen with dismay what he had never suspected, that the city was not the endless succession of canyons that he had supposed but that it had limits - from the tallest structure he saw for the first time that it faded out into the country on all sides, into an expanse of green and blue that alone was limitless. And with the awful realization that New York was a city after all and not a universe, the whole shining edifice that he had reared in his imagination came crashing to the ground."

"So perhaps I am destined to return some day and find in the city new experiences that so far I have only read about. For the moment I can only cry out that I have lost my splendid mirage. Come back, come back, O glittering and white!

Goodbye, TV

Tonight my DVR, filled with otherwise unavailable classic movies, kicked the bucket. Who knows when I'll get the chance to see the likes of The Wind or Mission to Moscow or Miss Mend again? And with that, I'm waving goodbye to television altogether. My cable bill was an uncomfortable expense that I couldn't really justify except for the idea of catching up with these films I'd recorded in past months and hadn't watched yet. With that excuse gone, fuck it.

If I can figure out a way to get high-speed internet without cable (and Comcast tries their best to make that an impossibility) I will be kicking goddamn television to the curb. I never watched it anyway, except for TCM and football games so the idiot box can go to hell as far as I'm concerned. (Not that the physical TV is going anywhere, as I need it to watch the volumes of DVDs I own, borrow, or rent from Netflix.)

I don't usually blog about this sort of thing, but I'm so annoyed right now I couldn't resist. This is the middle finger to you, television. After 26 years I'm saying goodnight and good riddance.

By the way, activity will probably pick up next week. There are reams of real-world distractions right now but I've got plenty to write about when I do get back. Stay tuned - pardon the inappropriate pun.

The Sacrifice

The Sacrifice was Andrei Tarkovsky's last film, made just before he was diagnosed with cancer and released while he was dying. Having now seen a slim majority of the master's films (and all of the ones which are most often acclaimed - save Nostalghia) I wouldn't rank this as one of my favorite Tarkovskys, though it was - as always - an interesting and often rewarding viewing experience. It's somewhat different from his other films in mood and style. Though his serious, slow, at times lugubrious aesthetic was never what when one would normally describe as "youthful", there's a painfully taut romanticism and intensity to his earlier films, a kind of breathlessness of expression which make their auteur appear a brash, bold enfant terrible. But The Sacrifice is somehow more stately, more mournful, less throbbing with the expressionist anxiety of young genius. It's a film of maturity, of regret, of decline - the characters are all older than the usual Tarkovsky protagonists, the camera style is more removed (despite the usual dreamlike black-and-white Tarkovskian interludes which Lars von Trier sought to evoke in Antichrist), and the scenario - both the setting and the story - more spare, if at times apocalyptic.

It feels like the film of a dying, or aging man, and though Tarkovsky was only fifty-three at the time, perhaps he sensed his impending illness. At any rate, he had been in exile for years now and the intensity of his method and his sensibilities must have taken their toll in the twenty years since the tumultuous Andrei Rublev. I haven't seen Nostalghia, but Stalker - the film before that - still holds that mystical belief in transcendence which Sacrifice seems to cast doubt on (its God is a more hidden, removed one, as befits all the Bergman references). And its brooding intensity still maintains the mark of a passionate brilliance, even if the precociousness has faded somewhat. The Sacrifice, likes its main character Alexander (Erland Johannsen), an artist past his prime, does not feel "in the thick of things" the way most of Tarkovsky's previous films did. It's a film of looking back: both explicitly in its text and in the way Tarkovsky strips things down and changes his style up, no longer seeking the same rapturous heights he did earlier.

Except...and here's the big BUT...Sacrifice contains one of the most bravura set pieces I've ever seen in a movie, a closer that could stand alone as a demonstration of what cinema, and in particular the cinema of the long take (one notion of pure cinema) can achieve. Alexander sets his house on fire, in fulfillment of what he believes has been an answered prayer - in a long shot, with a camera tracking horizontally while it follows, loses, and re-discovers both the burning home and the paltry human figures in front of it. I'd actually seen this sequence previously and was just as impressed then: seeing it in the full context of the movie only reinforces its uniqueness. As an image of destruction it is a fitting coda to Tarkovsky's career, and serves as a kind of fantastic reminder that, however otherwise restrained, the old Andrei still had it. Almost as if after flirting with talky anxiety and fearful confinement for two hours, restless with the results, the godlike Tarkovsky of yore stepped in once again to hurl lightning bolts down upon the little world he had created.

Watching the fascinating documentary which accompanies the film on DVD, we see Tarkovsky actually shooting this scene and are instantly reminded of the young bell-caster in Andrei Rublev, who risks death upon failure and whose nervy tenacity in going forward (despite catastrophic doubts which he keeps to himself) is both inspirational and terrifying. Of course, Tarkovsky - unlike the craftsman of his film - does fail, or at least his camera crew does with a malfunction that renders the entire expensive shot useless. Luckily he was able to rebuild the house, shoot it again and achieve the masterful results we see onscreen. Nonetheless, the analogy resonates because in the documentary we see him in the editing room, frail and sickly, wrapped up to keep him warm, with his head covered to hide the results of chemo therapy. Like the bell-caster he is facing mortality - and defying it in the creation of lasting art, the marshalling of human and natural resources to express a personal vision. The bell continues to toll, long beyond death.

January 20, 2010 - wither the new epoch?

At 9:00 am today, a re-publishing of my Obama piece from last year was slated to go up. The essay, a recounting of my attendance at the president's inauguration 24 hours after the fact, is still up here if you want to read it: as a first-hand memoir of the event and first-draft summation of the zeitgeist, it's still pretty interesting, I think. However, it no longer fits the mood of the moment. I was going to re-post it to commemorate the first anniversary of Obama's presidency today - not only its promise but rumbles of its discontent (which I saw represented, metaphorically, in the confusion and congestion of the gigantic crowd and the difficulty of authorities in marshalling them). Yet this ambivalence no longer seems appropriate, because the balance shifted yesterday - the ambivalence is souring into something more bitter, both in terms of the presidency and the populace that elected him.

As most of you know, Republican Scott Brown won the special election to replace Ted Kennedy tonight, beating the originally favored Democrat Martha Coakley for this historically Democratic Senate seat in a historically Democratic state. I am a Massachussetts resident, however I'm still a registered New Hampshire voter - I've remained on the rolls in the state of my birth because, among other reasons, it's a swing state where my vote actually seems to make a difference. Well, the joke's on me today - not that one vote would have dented Brown's shockingly comfortable margin. As an independent, I'm not a down-the-line liberal and I agree with Brown on some issues (well, Afghanistan anyway) over Coakley. But on the crucial issue of the day, health care - on which this 60th vote is actually essential - I've had it with the obstinant do-nothingism of ideologues like Brown.

Likewise with his general toe-the-line sensibility; that a Republican can win just a year after Bush left office doesn't infuriate me so much as that a Republican can win without making any effort to distance himself from the disastrous policies of one of the worst administrations in U.S. history. This victory seems to justify the intransigent, stubborn fanaticism of the right wing over the past year, and for that alone it's worth ruing. But worse than what it "represents" (which may be overblown although things certainly look even more troublesome for November '10 now) is what it means in concrete terms - that the already precarious and compromised health care bill is no longer protected by a 60-vote caucus. If one of the most initially popular presidents in history, with his party more in charge of the capital than it's been in a generation, can't pass a reform that the American people have repeatedly demonstrated their desire for (and if the American people can't quit dithering and hand-wringing long enough to demonstrate this desire when it matters most) ... well then, I might as well declare my disgust with politics once and for all and give up on any hope of moving forward on just about anything.

There's still that window of hope if the administration can get the House to approve the present bill and keep it safe from filibuster but if not, that new epoch I saw dawning a year ago may have prematurely come to its frozen halt on this day of wretched weather and dismal electoral results - or worse yet, this may be the new epoch, a decade of economic futility, public malaise, and pathetic political impotence - an era whose one redeeming virtue is that it rubs our faces in the shit we managed to avoid in the Zeroes: yet if even that exposure to the elements doesn't serve as a catalyst for change and improvement, what's the point? Might as well plug back in that iPod, turn up the TV and drown out the outside world.

Anyway, I hope this is not the case. But the general feeling is if not now, probably never - not just in terms of physical health care, but in terms of finally putting away childish things and facing up to the future and our nation's spiritual health. We'll see.